The Center
by EveningStorm
Summary: "Trapped in the depths of Aperture Laboratories, threatened and abused by the harsh GLaDOS, there seems to be no escape for Wall-E and Eve. How will they ever be free again?" A brilliant collaboration between Wall-E and Portal 2, The Center will keep you wanting to read more; I made sure that I nailed Wall-E and Eve's personalities perfectly. Please enjoy ;)
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

"Oh good, you're finally active," said a strange, feminine voice. It rang through the small room that the little cube was in. It was too bright, and the voice was too loud. All the senses of the box went on edge, becoming too sensitive to the environment. Acute binocular eyes lifted slowly from the top of the little brown cube and they started to glance slowly around.

"Stand straight, let me get a scan on you." The voice boomed. There was something about it, something that seemed off. No doubt, the voice was not of a human, but it sounded not of an electronic recording, either. Above the brown cube was a camera, it looked the small thing up and down carefully, looking like a strange red eye. It seemed familiar, and yet, completely foreign.

"Honesty, some of you robots just don't like to take an order, stand up!" The voice sounded fierce enough to make the small, boxed robot un-cube and stretch its thin neck up and spread its hydraulic arms to either side. The camera looked over the robot again.

"So, they call you Wall•E. Such a charming name, I've heard that Wally is Germanic and means 'ruler of the army' Let's put that to the test." Now the voice almost sounded cheerful, as it echoed through the room. Wall•E finally gathered the courage to take a full look around. He was in some kind of glass box, and beyond that glass box was some kind of very bright room. There was only one panel in the glass box that he was in that was a white panel. Something urged him to turn his head and look behind himself.

Overpowering the white of the rooms, Wall•E's whole life unfolded from her own egg shape.

Eve.

When he saw her, Wall•E turned, hoping to get to her, but she was in another glass case and turned away from him. Wall•E placed both hands on the glass and pounded on it, "Evaah!" He cried, "Eeeevvvaaaah!" She heard him! She was turning and she—A gray wall lifted in between the two glass vaults, cutting off Wall•E's vision of his beloved.

"Well, look. A name doesn't matter in this place. Mostly for such a small little robot like you." The feminine voice went into a cold flow of hissing words before returning to some cheerful ones once more, "Well, you'll do." Wall•E slowly dragged his gaze from the gray wall and back to the camera that was staring him down. "Why don't I just put you in protocol for the moment while I work out some things before we begin your testing?"

There was a click, and then a clearly pre-recorded male voice started to explain, "Hello and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties due to circumstances of potentially apocalyptic significance beyond our control…" The recording slowed and shut off when it came to the word 'control' and then the room was enveloped with static.

"Sorry about that, I don't know why that one turned on." Wall•E slowly backed into the corner farthest from the camera and closed himself partly back into a cube, making a scared, shivering sound.

"I will, on the other hand, not tell you the actual status of the outside world; it wouldn't be relevant to either of us. So why don't we both just let the subject be?" The voice was starting to scare Wall•E, as well as the factor of the camera, also the fact that Eve was also locked in this place, but out of his reach, out of his site… It was making him go on the verge of craziness.

"Your actions remind me so much of another test subject I had a while back…" She paused for a moment, thinking over the idea for a moment before making a crackling sound and then returning to what she was wanting to say.

"The portal will open in 3… 2… 1…"

The one real panel in the glass box suddenly became a hole, the edges were blue, and it showed the glass box from the outside. At a second glance, Wall•E could see another hole in the wall outside of the vault. He slowly made his way forward toward it; then he realized that he could see himself in it. He tilted his head at it and investigated it a little more.

A portal? Like a paper with a hole cut in it? He cautiously put a hand through it. Finding that it felt pretty safe, he stepped one of his treads through it. Then slowly shuffled his way through the rest of the way. When he made his way out, he investigated it a little bit on the other side. Now he was on the other side of the glass box. Wall•E was happy to be at least free from that.

Which reminded him: How did he even get there? It was only a few years after the Axiom landed, and they had been investigating a broken down building, when they had entered, nothing was working, then out of nowhere, everything turned on and some claws found and caught Wall•E and Eve. Other than that, he couldn't remember anything, he only wanted Eve back.

He went over to the gray wall that separated him and her, placing a hand on it and knocking on it; pressing the side of his optics to the surface. He could tell that it was way too thick to hear through it, but still, he yelled out her name once again.

Things turned quiet when he finished, and he tilted his eyes down, wishing with all his might that he could maybe probe the female robot to let them be together. If only, if only… With great pain and sadness, Wall•E removed himself from the wall, but just as he pulled himself away, he felt a pulse of electricity surge through the wall, it seemed pretty strong, it was a good thing that he had pulled away just then.

He gave it one more glance before he turned to the exit door. It opened into another white room.

The voice spoke once more, "So, let it begin…"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Another shock jumbled up the senses of the white probe, but still she proceeded to smash her body into the glass wall once again. Even after so many hits, the glass only held the wound of a small crack. But the probe was getting more damage. Tired and fizzled in the head, she finally stopped and lay down on the floor in defeat.

"…has been processed and we are not ready to begin the test proper…" The probe could finally hear as she rested. There was a pause in what the computer voice was saying and then she said, "Are you finished with destroying the place now? You can start the test now, the portal is open." The probe looked over to see a blue disk, showing an outer view of the glass box she was being held hostage in.

Freedom? Freedom! She hissed out a laugh and swished through the oval hole in the wall and swiveled around the outer room to see if there was any other way out.

It was then that, ever-so-lightly, she heard a knock on a gray wall that had just moved into place a while ago. She leaned her head against it and put her hands on the wall—or at least, hand; for some reason, her complete right arm was gone—she could hear—faintly, but unmistakably—Wall•E calling her name, "Eeeevaaahhh!"

She was just about to call his name back and slam on the wall with her hand, when an electric shock went through her whole body, originating from the wall.

The electricity was so powerful, it threw her backwards, and she pounded against the glass vault so hard, it created a large crack behind her. In pain, she fell to the ground and lay there for a while.

"I was doing some research, I found out that when something is magnetically capable of moving freely, it also has a higher capability of electric charge transfer. Interesting, isn't it?" Came the voice over the intercom.

"Vurry…" Eve hissed in pain to herself, a lot of static broke her reply into a malformed rumble of sound instead of the intended 'very'.

"Don't you pretend like you can feel pain, Probe." The voice said, "Now please leave the Relaxation Vault Chamber so we can start the testing." At first she sounded hostile, and then cooled down when she spoke of testing.

Eve lifted herself, pressing a hand to her head, trying to stabilize her senses. Then she grew curious, she looked up at the portals that had been created, and then looked over at a camera watching her closely from across the room.

"Name?" She asked, her voice sort of groggy sounding.

"Please leave the room for the testing, Probe." The voice pressed.

Eve shook her head, "Eve." She told the other robot her name, not wanting her to call her Probe again, "Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator."

The voice didn't reply, but Eve looked over at a glass room above that has computer screens, desks, and chairs. There were words scrolling down on the monitors, Eve came over to the room and looked up into it carefully. She zoomed in and focused out all the other jumbles of code, but found something interesting that kept showing up. Something like a Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System.

"GLaDOS?" She asked, making sure she said it right.

GLaDOS paused, then she said, "There is no need for this, continue on to the next chamber or I may have to disassemble you." She said, sounding calm, but deep beneath was clearly frustration.

Finally gaining back full control over herself, Eve moved toward a rounded door with a blue stick person on it, and it opened immediately.

The things in the next chamber made Eve gasp. It was a small room, but when she looked straight up, it was a complicated puzzle with fast moving crushers smashing the walls on a timer. Eve assumed it was at least pretty easy at first, organizing a calculator in her head that would help her with the timing. She could fly, and that would make this level all the more easy.

But as she started to lift upwards, she found she was being held down when she was only a few feet off of the ground. It was as if something was keeping her weight down and making it so that she could not fly any higher without using extreme amounts of energy at a time.

"Some of the magnetic gravity chambers in your body have been removed for realistic testing purposes, like the change? I think it gives a nice touch to your test results." Eve's eyes widened, and she looked bewildered at a camera that watched her from the wall. She growled and went over to it to try and rip it from the wall, but couldn't reach it.

"I have a surprise for you, though" some kind of thing was moving behind her on the floor. Eve turned to see a stand lift from the floor. On it, was her right arm. She went over to it, and placed it back against her body, but there was something different about it. She released it into her plasma cannon—but it didn't change immediately, and it didn't even change into the plasma cannon at all. Instead, it folded out into a different gun. The new gun had three thin, claw-like parts that came out of the front, and one part of her arm compacted in to show some kind of clear chamber, and a small hole that was a bit farther down.

She looked it over, some of her flawless white arm had turned to black pieces, and the opening in the front was wider. Also, it seemed like she could shoot three different things, she chose one, and it shot out a blue streak, but then hit the dark floor and made a swirl that quickly disappeared. Then she pressed the second, and it did the same, except purple. She pressed the third, and the gun twisted, but didn't do anything. But Eve could feel some kind of pull that happened from the front when she pressed it.

"You now have an Aperture Science Handheld Dual Portal Device. Good luck!" Eve shivered from her voice, she knew this whole experience would not turn out well…


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"I bet you can easily find out this chamber without my help. So, enjoy your test solving." Wall•E moaned at the female robot's voice. The room was dark, and some panels were falling into holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling. Some strange plants reached down into the room. Well, at least that meant that life was spreading after the Axiom landed, even down here… Wherever this was…

He strolled slowly to a giant red button that was on the floor. He stood on it, and another door opened, and a cube fell from a hole in the ceiling. Wall•E tilted his head and whistled in interest. Then he came over to it, but as soon as he came off of the button, the door slammed shut.

So Wall•E continued to go toward the cube, and he picked it up, it was about the same size as his body but a bit lighter than he was. Wall•E placed the cube on the button and turned toward the exit, a blue dotted-line that led from the button to the door turned orange and some of the parts of the cube turned orange as well.

"Did you know that this was the first test chamber for humans when I used to test with them? Before…" She faded off; Wall•E could swear he almost heard a smile in her voice, though he assumed she didn't have a mouth to smile with.

"Well, it's a long story and we've got so many tests to go through. First, note the incandescent partial field across the exit. This Material Emancipation Grill will vaporize any unauthorized equipment that passes through it…" The voice paused for a moment, "My, my, I'm starting to sound like my old self again, well then, I better put a stop to it."

She made a hissing sound and then continued, "Anyway, I would recommend not putting any Weighted Storage Cubes through it. Also, some of the contaminants that are crusted on you may be painfully vaporized." Wall•E glanced down at his dirty body and cringed, "Oh wait, you can't feel pain. Ah well, just hope that you don't have anything classified as unauthorized in your circuits." Another smile entered her cold voice.

Wall•E looked at the camera that was watching him carefully and slowly wheeled himself to the exit. As he came up to the Emancipation Grill, he stopped and carefully put a hand through it. He felt twinges in his arm and he looked back at the chamber worriedly, knowing that somewhere past that door and around the corner and through another wall was his Eve.

With great regret and sadness, he stepped fully through the Emancipation Grill. It burnt painfully into his metal, and even a bit inside of his circuits and hydro pumps and his motherboard. He shrieked from the pain, but nevertheless stepped through it completely.

A huge round room lay down some stairs in front of him, and in the center was a cylinder. An elevator? Cautiously he stepped into it, and it closed behind him, and moved down into the ground. As it did, the intercom clicked on again and the female voice spoke once more.

"I am sending you into the easiest levels of the Enrichment Center. The [i]humanized[/i] chambers. The ones so simple that… Well, let's just say a robot like you can work them out." Wall•E looked down, ashamed and still sad from leaving Eve behind. Now he had no idea what was ahead.

For all he knew, she could be leading him to nothing but his destruction. But there was nothing he could do about it, he had to get through these tests. Who knows why he was here and why that robot voice wanted him to do the tests, but it seemed like there was no way to escape them.

The elevator lowered into another round room and stopped. "You should enjoy this one, it has to do with a lot of button pressing. But don't you worry, there will be more tests that will be more dangerous… Well, I best not tell you that." She faded off for a moment, then only turned off completely.

Wall•E turned a corner, there was drop below him. This room was mostly grown over with plants; it was hard to walk on some kind of flat ground. Instead, he had to pick his way over some roots before he made it over to the center of the room, where there was three different glass rooms with a button in front of each one.

He went to one and pressed it, it opened a blue portal inside the room closest to it. He brightened up and made an interested, "Ooh…" He pressed the next button, and it opened one in there, then he went over to the next and clicked that too. He looked back and forth, then knowing exactly what to do, he went to one button quickly and pressed it. The room that the blue portal appeared in had a cube in there. He turned to an orange portal behind him and went through it, grabbed the cube, and brought it back out. Then he opened the other that had a big button in the room. Then he placed the cube on the button.

Still working quickly, he clicked the last button and it opened the final chamber, where a door had opened. He went through the portal again and started to go down the stairs when the intercom voice came on again.

"Very good, you may be useful enough for me after all…" As Wall•E entered the elevator, he felt an ominous feeling deep in his circuits…


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Eve dodged another crusher, it slammed into the wall only inches from her side. Quickly, she shot a portal up at the next open area where a white surface was, a blue portal attaching to the wall. Then she quickly ducked back into the purple one below her, the crusher just barely brushed the top of her head. She had no time to shriek in fear, but instead only launched herself through the portals and into the open clearing where the exit door opened in her wake.

"Now this next test, I have a surprise, I think you'll quite like it. It has to do with—" GLaDOS stopped suddenly and Eve could hear a far away chuckle, "I'm sorry, wrong room. That was intended for my brown bot—" She paused once again when she noticed she had let out a bit too much information. Eve gasped and stared wide-eyed at the camera, wishing her to tell her more.

"Woh-what?" Eve asked, in shock. She had known that somehow Wall•E was in the Enrichment Center too, and she had worried about him the entire time. She hoped that he wasn't hurt in some place, because she knew that if he was, there was no way that this robot would fix him. In fact, she may even tear him apart, using his pieces for other technologies of any kind…

She dare not think of it, knowing that there could be a possibility that she comes across something that is secretly a piece of Wall•E himself… Eve pulled away from her terrible thoughts as best as she could, coming over to get up to the camera, folding the portal gun back into her normal arm. She pushed herself upward as much as she could, but only got close enough that she could barely grasp it with both hands.

"GLLLaDOS!" She screamed at it, the camera did nothing but t\stare at her and there was no reply, "Grrr-rruuhh…" She growled, trying to put her anger into actual words.

"Defiance is an offense that I do not take lightly, and in such acts, require terrible consequences." GLaDOS said before Eve could try to say something else. Eve felt a numbing feeling, she knew only one thing would come out of this, and it was nothing good.

"You see, there is this place that bad robots go to when they defy the rules." The chamber rumbled slightly, and Eve held tight to the camera, "A place where nothing can save you, a place where pieces burn into everlasting blazes. Soon enough, nothing remains." A gear sound stared up, and Eve gasped as she watched in horror as the floor began to part before her.

She held tighter to the camera, but suddenly it broke from the wall, "Ah-ah-ah, I won't let you escape from this great experience." The voice became harsh, and yet with a smile. How that could be possible was beyond anything Eve could comprehend, but nevertheless, somehow it was possible.

A wave of heat blasted Eve's body, and she stared down in fear as fires lapped at the walls of a room far below. The floor continued to open, and Eve was helpless, unable to lift herself more than a few feet off of the ground, she would be doomed if she was too fall.

"This is a wonderful place I like to call, Android Hell. I could make you take a visit, maybe you can even find a little space to live down there. Careful of all those flames, though, while you were asleep I discovered your metals are not adequate to any kind of temperatures over 4,000 degrees Kelvin. Good luck."

The floor continued to open, Eve smashed her body against the wall as the camera she had been holding fell into the abyss of flames. As heroic as Eve always liked to be, she couldn't help but scream as loud as she could; the screams echoed everywhere. They were so harsh, they even hurt her own microphone.

A different movement caught her eye, and she looked near the open exit. To her surprise, a tiny platform folded out of the wall. She quit screaming and made a fast move toward the exit, leaping onto the platform as fast as she could. The door opening was a little too high to fly up to in her condition, she would have to pull herself up using her arms.

As she placed her arms on the above ground, she saw the place where she had been before disappearing into the wall, then felt the platform beneath her fold back inside the wall.

She was left to hang there. Her body fell dangerously far from her arms, but she gathered all her might to keep her arms from dislocating from her torso as she pulled herself up. She strained to pull herself up, but soon enough finally made it.

As she got her torso above the edge, she rolled onto her back and lay there for a moment. She looked down the stairs passed the Emancipation Grill and at the elevator. How many more of these tests would she give before she wouldn't give her a platform to escape? And what of Wall•E? What would GLaDOS do to him if he showed any sign of defiance?

Worried, she slowly got up and made her way passed the Emancipation Grill and went to the elevator. Not a smirk word of advice from the demanding and terrible GLaDOS? Such a surprise.

As relieved as Eve felt when she realized GLaDOS wouldn't say something terrible to her, she also thought of why she wasn't talking to her. Maybe she was talking to Wall•E… Or maybe some other test subject… That wasn't cheerful at all either, it made her wonder: How many more test subjects were there in the facility?

It reminded her of when she and Wall•E had found this place. In ruins deep underground, they had found strange chambers and many other things. What was most interesting was when they came across a huge warehouse that was full of these metal tank things.

Then she remembered when Wall•E had pulled a switch and the place had come to life. As they had watched in horror as several of the tanks started to shift, including one in a distance that was—sort of—smoothly riding a rail, they hadn't noticed one of the tanks falling off of a pile and straight onto them until it had been too late.

Eve cringed as the elevator moved, those were terrible things to remember. Especially now. Although it did remind her of how she got there, it hadn't cheered her up. For all she knew, all those tanks contained people in Suspension, and who knows what was happening to them right then.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Wall•E held back another shriek of pain as he went through another Emancipation Grill and it continued to burn deep into his metals. Although most of his body could not feel anything, there were at least sensors in more important parts of his body that were sensitive enough to feel the Emancipation Grills as it vaporized the dirt of his body.

It was sad to see that his front panel was sort of clean, the half-moon shaped dirt stain was completely gone. Although it also made him wonder if his Eve would like this new change… Although the thought of what she would think also brought him the painstaking realization that there was a possibility that he may never see her again. And he'd just sit there… Testing… For eternity… For… Forever…

His mind was on the subject for the whole time as he strolled down a little bit of stairs and turned a corner to see a huge hole in the ground.

"Sorry about that, I forgot to fix that after the last test subject." Wall•E slowly came over and looked down the gaping hole. Deep down was a bit of water, but he couldn't get a good look at it before new black panels folded out and covered the hole.

Wall•E looked to his right where he thought he saw some other movement. A strange stand slowly slid from a panel in the wall, being pushed by a tiny arm. After the arm got the stand to the middle of the room, it jerked a little bit around, like it was trying to make sure that it was perfectly center. Then it placed the stand firmly on the ground, and disappeared behind the panel that slammed shut behind it.

Wall•E lifted a brow at the panel and then sent his attention back to the thin stand in the middle. On it, was a strange thing that looked like a fancy white, metal squid. Wall•E tilted his head at it and looked at it strangely. Slowly he came closer, almost forgetting that the floor had been gone from there just a moment ago. When he reached out for it, he realized it wasn't a squid, it was more like a gun of some sort.

"You are now in possession of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device." The voice said as Wall•E grasped the thing. As he examined it, a grumbling sound came from the floor and he immediately moved away from the place where the ground had been gone. Then he looked at the gun again—or the… Portal Device…

There were three trigger-like buttons, he could only guess what two of them were, but not the third. He pointed it toward a white panel of wall, and pressed the first trigger. A ball of yellow light launched out and made the wall get covered with a yellow oval. A portal? He pressed the second button, and a red ball went out, making the yellow oval show what was in front of the newly active red portal.

"I decided to skip a few boring levels for you and just give you the Dual Portal Device instead of only the one-portal gun." The voice said. Wall•E pressed the third trigger, it seemed to do nothing. Maybe it would be useful in later tests. With one last look at it, he glanced around for the exit, which was on another level above the room he was at.

Thankfully, he could put a portal up there. He placed the red portal next to the exit, and the yellow one beside himself. He walked through it comfortably and turned to the exit. Then he groaned, another Emancipation Grill was there. He decided to try and do it differently, this time, he backed up, then raced forward through it to get passed it as fast as he could.

He almost didn't feel anything! Or at least he didn't have much more things that were 'unauthorized' to be vaporized off of him. He raced around the elevator in triumph.

"Stop it! Any sign of emotion in a robotic system could prove to become harmful for both the robot itself and others." The voice boomed above him. Emotions proving harmful? Wall•E had never heard of such a thing. In fact, he had already gone through so many examples that it did the opposite. He shook his head, but decided to stop anyway.

As he backed up into the elevator, he shot the glass of it randomly with the portals he had. Yellow and red spark-like sprays rebounded off of the walls and disappeared into the air. The colors made him wonder…

If he had been going through portals that were blue and orange back in the previous tests, why was he given a pair of different colored portals now?


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

It had been five chambers since the almost-visit to 'Android Hell' and Eve was still kind of shaken. She moved quickly through the tests, working fast and hard to make up for her 'defiance'. She could not keep that from entering her mind every second. Although some chambers took only moments, there were some cases that it was difficult to go through.

She came out of the elevator again and went up the stairs, ready to examine the chamber. But… There was no chamber… The whole place was in shambles, everything was torn apart and most of it was covered in vegetation.

"Sorry about the mess." GLaDOS called from some other room beside the one she was in. The speakers must not be working in this mess. "Hold on, I'll clean it up for you. You're moving through these chambers too fast. You know I have other test subjects to keep an eye on. One especially…"

Eve gasped, what if it was Wall•E that she was talking about? Suddenly, she realized that this was the perfect time that she could escape. She looked for any open places that may lead to the outside. She found one just as panels began to scrape out the debris, but with dread, she realized that it was too high up for her to reach.

Unless…

She shot a portal right next to the opening, and one on the wall next to her. She poked her head through and was about to grab a hold of it and race through the wall and into freedom, panels slammed shut and she could not get inside. She moved away from the portal and looked down. Feeling defeat.

"I'm glad you're thinking with portals, but you know what I said about defiance." Eve's eyes widened and she backed up against a wall. She had thought that GLaDOS wouldn't be able to see her since the chamber had been broken down and there weren't any cameras. She looked around, trying to find out how she could have seen her.

"I'm over here," Eve caught movement from one side of the room, when she looked, she saw something hanging from above, a robot with a yellow eye, watching her through a doorway at the end of the chamber. Eve's inner circuits dropped.

Was that?

It was.

GLaDOS had been watching her try to escape through the exit door. Why would she keep the room that close to her? Were the other chambers as close as that? Was this the perfect chance to attack GLaDOS and force her to give Wall•E back and let them both go?

"As much as I hate to interrupt a good testing sequence, I would like to have… A little chat with you after you're finished with that chamber." She said coolly with a strange twist of sinister mischief. The door closed, and Eve just stared at it for a moment. What she hadn't noticed was that, while the door was open between her and GLaDOS, a small arm had placed a camera to the wall to keep an eye on her.

When Eve noticed the camera, she lifted her arm up to shoot it with a portal and make it fall; but the second she pulled the trigger, a crusher caught between Eve's gun and the camera. Smashing against the wall in front of her. Eve just stared at it wide-eyed as it retracted back.

But it didn't [i]just[/i] retract. It retracted, shifted, and geared up to crush Eve. Quickly, she shot a portal under herself and disappeared through it to come out of the other portal that had been higher up next to the opening in the wall.

When she got a chance to look back at the camera, she also saw that there was a wall of Thermal Discouragement Beams going across the room. And in front of that, was an Emancipation Grill. Eve's eyes widened even more, then she started looking for something to deactivate the beams.

As she looked, she also saw the opposite wall opening to reveal another crusher coming from the other direction. She used the same portal technique to dodge that one as well; shooting away on another wall and then shooting the second portal below her. Hating that she couldn't just fly up to dodge it.

What, was she trying to kill her? When the thought crossed her mind, she felt dread flow like ice through her circuit system. She had only been through… She tried to count out the chambers, although she became distracted once again as she dodged another crusher.

"Twenty!" She said out loud. It surprised her, but she thought that was right. She ended up turning around and moving fast back to the beginning of the level, where the fluorescent screen would tell her the number and the dangers. Although, when she looked at it, everything was black with dirt and broken pixels except one part of it could be seen.

She could see part of a two on the left center. It had to be about twenty, for sure. Eve then looked back at the chamber that she was supposed to go through. The crushers were going off on a timer again, starting with the one closest to where Eve was and then one by one going farther. Then they retracted all together just to start over again.

The panels above the crushers had been changed to black panels, same with all of them that were by the exit door. The only part of the place that could take a portal was the floor. She looked a bit more, then she realized there was some kind of other area to her left.

When she made her way over there, she saw a deep drop below and a ledge on the other side. Nothing could hold a portal except the panels at the bottom of the drop. On the ledge, there were three Re-directional Cubes and two regular cubes. She noted that there were three Thermal Discouragement Beam Receivers right next to the place where the beams were coming out of.

She worked out the puzzle fast, using momentum to get to the ledge and throwing all the boxes as hard as she could so they would land on the other side of the drop. Then she leaped back into one of her portals below to come flying back up from the other. Working out the timing, she put a portal on the floor next to her, and the other on the far end on the floor. As soon as the crushers parted, she threw all of the cubes in the one as fast as she could, then quickly followed them, then used the third trigger on the gun and using her other arm to quickly move them out of the way of the crushers.

Stacking the two Re-directional cubes on top of the normal cubes in such a manner that they directed the Thermal Discouragement Beams into the receivers was very difficult to do. But it was done nevertheless. She needed to have a chance to speak with GLaDOS, whatever it was that GLaDOS wanted to talk about.

All the right things activated, the door opened, and Eve beheld GLaDOS's hanging figure in her eyes once more and they stared at each other once more.

"Well done, Probe." GLaDOS said as Eve slowly floated into her domed room. "I made up that chamber just on the spot, did you enjoy it?" Eve narrowed her eyes at the other robot. "Oh, so that's it?" The door slammed behind Eve and the panels of the dome seemed to shift in such a way, that it made Eve almost quiver. "I guess what's next is the staring contest that will last until one of us dies, right?" GLaDOS said sarcastically.

"Well then, two can play at this game," Out of nowhere, a claw came down and grabbed Eve around the torso, forcing her arms against her body. GLaDOS then brought Eve so close to her one yellow eye, that it almost touched Eve's face screen. "Now, let's have our little chat…"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Wall•E slowly came down to the next elevator. It had been almost two whole chambers and the voice over the intercom hadn't said anything to him at all. Confused, relieved, and yet also worried, Wall•E had pushed through the tests as effectively as he could. His mind was halfway stuck in some other world.

A world where he and his Eve left this terrible place peacefully, and all wrong was turned once more to good, and they could once more return to the ever-more-growing colony.

"Oh, there you are!" The voice made Wall•E jump right before he entered the elevator. It was that intercom lady again, here to say something evil and hurtful just to spice up how he works in the next test chamber.

"Good thing I caught you there, I've got another surprise for you, and this one I am sure you'll like." Wall•E whimpered a little bit as he heard beeps come from the intercom. "I'm redirecting your course to another room. It seems there's something you must attend to." The elevator shifted, the door closes, then opened again. "Go ahead," she said, Wall•E still standing in front of it, "It won't bite." Bite? Who said an elevator could bite?

Reluctantly, Wall•E stepped through the opening and turned, the glass doors shutting behind him. He held his dual portal gun tight, worried about where he was going next.

Different ideas went through his head, the elevator ride seemed longer than usual, going deeper and deeper into the ground. The pressure almost seemed to change and Wall•E shrunk down into his cube a little ways before finally the elevator came to a stop and opened.

Wall•E gradually went up the stairs and through the door that had opened as he neared it. It seemed just like a normal test chamber… At least, it seemed like one. Wall•E continued onwards, the portal gun raised and ready for any kind of tricks that the voice might pull on him.

"WALL•E!" Came the sweet sound of the most wonderful, familiar voice. He turned to the left suddenly and gazed upon what he had wishing he could gaze upon for hours and hours. His precious Eve, her hands pressed up against a glass wall that lay between them.

"EVAH!" Wall•E screamed back, throwing the portal gun to the ground and racing to the glass wall as well. He pressed his optics hard against the glass, and she did the same.

"Evah…" He said calmly, the sense of her presence made the place seem to brighten and glow with rejoice and wonder. A short hissing sound made him get torn back into his senses. He did so just in time, as a red beam went over either side of the glass. Eve recoiled from surprise and tumbled a little ways off. He watched her as she stumbled and fell to the ground, he squeaked in surprise as well as the floor beneath him fell out from under himself.

He fell to the bottom with a painful cracking sound, and he could barely hear Eve as she screamed out his name. As he got to his treads once more, he saw that the portal gun had also fallen in the pit with him. He reached over and grabbed it, automatically aiming and shooting a portal at the ceiling over one side of the pit, and placing the other on the wall next to him.

Spotting Eve watching the portal on the ceiling carefully, he waved to her, then fell in; falling, with a thud, face first onto the ground. A muffled giggle arose from her side of the glass, and he couldn't help but chuckle at himself too.

"Enough with that vile stupidity!" The voice was strict over the speakers, which were ironically right next to Wall•E's face. The harshness and volume of the sudden voice spooked Wall•E enough that he yelped and got back upright as fast as he could. He looked over at where Eve was coming closer to him on her side. When Wall•E looked ahead, he noted that the test chamber was a long corridor that was full of obstacles, split down the middle so they could not reach each other. Just on the edge of torture…

"Evah…" Wall•E picked up the portal gun and moved back over to the glass, more cautiously now so that he would not have to go through that again. Eve placed her hands once more on the glass. They both gazed into each others' eyes through the glass for a moment.

Then Eve blinked and pointed above, Wall•E looked to see a camera staring at them both, "GLaDOS." She said.

"Gllll…" Wall•E thought it over for a moment. Was she referring to the name of the camera, or to something else? "Gllll…"

"GLaDOS."

"A… Doss…" Wall•E strained to pronounce it, "Glll… Ay… Doss?" Eve glanced back at the camera and then back at Wall•E, then nodded. "GL-ay-DOS…" He repeated to himself. "GLayDOS?" He asked Eve.

"GLaDOS!" Eve said, clearly starting to get frustrated.

"I see what you are doing, and I don't quite like it." The voice said over the intercom.

"OH!" Wall•E finally understood. GLaDOS was the intercom voice! Feeling proud at what he discovered, he looked back at his Eve once more.

"Gerr-ah," Eve made her sound for a strange 'uh oh' and she looked back at the camera before looking at Wall•E again, "Rr-reah," She leaned close to the glass, "Wall•E… Gerrrr…" She made a rattling sound and pointed toward the test chamber ahead. She pointed toward a button on the floor on his side. He got to hint to go forward and step on it, and as he did, a few panels opened up and Eve floated through. As soon as she did, the button shut itself off and the panels closed behind her.

"EVAH!" Wall•E yelled, having her out of his sight freaked him out, and he jumped on and off the button to try and activate it again, although it never did.

"Wall•E!" Eve's mumbled call came from ahead, and he looked over to see that there was also a panel opening at the end of his side of the chamber; she had somehow opened it from the other side. When he made his way through, he saw that she was pressing herself down onto a button as well. He gave her a smooth smile with his binocular eyes and came over to the glass again.

"Eah-rrouw!" She shook her head, and pointed ahead again. Surprised by her reaction, Wall•E felt slightly upset, why didn't she want to stop doing the test and find a way out of there? He tilted his eyes down and looked at the next part of the test, moving forward with his head drooped and the portal gun clutched in his arms limply.

"Wall•E?" He turned immediately to Eve's call, she gazed at him with sad eyes as well, "Surwy…" She mumbled, Wall•E took it as a worried 'sorry' but he still couldn't understand. He nodded slowly and looked ahead once more.

"Wall•E…" She said, and he turned again, she pointed straight toward Wall•E, then at herself, and then pretended to hold something square in one hand, then placed two fingers of the other hand into the invisible square, then suddenly pulled the fingers away and waved to the invisible square. Then she pointed from him and then herself again, then squeezed her arms around herself and smiled.

As confusing as it might be to someone else…

…Wall•E had understood every single word.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

They both reached their hands through the small opening in the glass, soon enough entwining their fingers with each others. Wall•E had put down his portal gun and Eve had kept hers still folded within her arm. They were _supposed_ to be passing a box over through the hole, but they really didn't want to.

After so long apart, they couldn't resist when they were able to do this: To hold each others' hands, to feel the warm that radiated off of the other's body, to entrance themselves in each others' electromagnetic energy, and to comfort each other in the deepest and firmest ways.

"Do you not remember the task you have?" GLaDOS said, her cruel voice made Eve twinge slightly, but she continued to look into Wall•E's eyes.

"The wall will detonate in 3… 2…" Before she could say one, the glass wall erupted, sending both Wall•E and Eve tumbling backwards and slamming into the opposite, real wall. Eve groaned in pain as she slowly got back up, looking fast at Wall•E to make sure he was okay. The glass wall had not destroyed itself, but in some way had blown them back and scorched the opening where they had put their hands through.

Well that was welcoming. Eve looked through the opening to see Wall•E starting to get up, "Wall•E?" She asked in concern. He turned his head to her and nodded slightly before pushing himself to be upright again. Eve made a relieved sighing sound and then turned and grabbed the cube they were supposed to pass—which had also been blasted a little ways off. She pushed it through the opening and went through the Emancipation Grill that was facing the exit down the chamber, and then came back over to another opening in the glass beyond it.

Wall•E grabbed the cube and brought it back over to her and pushed it back through, but as they both grabbed the cube, their hands brushed, making them pause. Eve giggled, pulling in the cube and putting it down on her side, then tapped Wall•E's hand, which he had placed calmly on the sill of the opening. They looked into each others' eyes, saying things to each other that no one could understand just with their eyes.

Eve could sense that GLaDOS was about to say another sour retort about their actions or set off yet another detonation at random, just to separate them. She pulled away from him, giving a quick nod to him before she grabbed the cube and placed it on a big red button on the floor. By effect, it opened both of their doors, and they went through them together and the door shut behind them.

Eve turned right again to take another gander at her beloved, but, with horror, she saw that the chamber had changed, and now there was no longer glass in between them, but instead a thick, black wall.

"WALL•E!" Eve screamed, pounding the wall, but she could not hear a reply of any kind, "WAAALL•EEE!" She screamed again, hitting on it harder. Her concentration on sounds on the other side of the wall, she barely noticed as gears started up on her side.

"I wouldn't try it." GLaDOS said calmly, bringing Eve's attention back to her own place, no longer avoiding what she heard coming from below her. Terror tore hollow wounds deep in Eve's main circuits as she watched the floor part below her. She yelped as she looked around for any way to get away from the disaster of the flames far below.

It was impossible… The entire room could not hold a portal, and now there was no way to hide from it, there was no exit door as well. Eve smashed her body up against the side of the wall, shutting her eyes as she felt the floor disappear from under her and she fell. Final regrets drew her to the conclusion that she had never wanted to feel: This was the end.

She fell for a few seconds before she landed with a huge thud onto something metal and moving. Her senses went into a short moment of shock before she could drag herself to open her eyes and get up. The thing she was on was a moving platform, and it was going down some kind of corridor. Although, unmistakably, below her were the flames of the incinerator room.

Wide-eyed with surprise and terror, Eve waited for GLaDOS to at least explain to her why she's been threatening to drop her into an incinerator room and then saving her at the very last second.

"Funny things, emotions." She finally said as the platform continued down its path, "Probably the most terrible trait that a human can possess. These so-called, 'feelings' only makes them weak, dangerous, pitiful, and unreliable." Eve watched around her carefully, folding out her portal gun just in case she needed it suddenly, with the way she was talking.

"That is exactly why robots are superior to those filthy things, they don't have feelings. They can only establish what's logical and what's false, whether or not the results have moral or 'meaning' is completely irrelevant. Data points are data points." The platform started to go down a place that forked off, both corridors had a bottom, so that it didn't _just_ drop into the incinerator room.

"But you!" The platform smoothly started going down one way but then suddenly jerked to go into the other, "You, Probe, like to pretend like you _can_ have feelings… It just makes it seem so much funnier." The place started to darken, and Eve could barely even see.

"I'd have to congratulate you on that, by the way." A pre-recorded male voice cut in, "Sarcasm self test complete." Eve groaned, trying to ignore everything she said and watch out for what was coming up ahead. She kept thinking of Wall•E, where was he? Was he okay? What was happening to him right then? What if she was going to try and kill him? … What if he was already dead?

She could barely hold back a whimper when she thought of it, and she shoved the thought from her mind, and instead started to spot a small light ahead…


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"This next test includes some good companions of mine." GLaDOS chuckled slightly, but Wall•E wasn't really paying attention. His mind was lost far away again. Not paying attention to where he was going, but instead he was trying to think of where Eve was and if she was okay. He remembered the worried look in her eyes as she kept a close eye on the camera that was behind her as they were reunited.

Why were they separated? That was not fair, there was no good reason to put them together just to pull them apart after a short amount of time together. Now every minute seemed so slow, like it dragged on through an hour. He sighed and followed the thin chamber along; a turn came up and he turned it slowly.

He was so out of focus in his thoughts, that he didn't notice when a small white robot opened itself up and said calmly, "Deploying." Then suddenly the place erupted with bullets shooting at him in rapid fire. Wall•E freaked out, backing up around the corner so fast and so hard, that he slammed into the wall and fell into a heap of disoriented mechanics.

When he got back up, he noticed he dropped the portal gun, so he reached over and grabbed it. He peaked his head around the corner again, now having a real second to look at this thing. It almost looked like it was Eve for a moment, the shape gave it that impression, but it had a red eye instead of a black face screen with beautiful blue eyes…

"Target acquired." Wall•E pulled his head back behind the wall again, "Are you still there?" the white robot asked, Wall•E thought about it for a moment, watching as a red light beam searched the place and then steadied straight ahead of it, probably generating from the red eye, "Sleep mode activated." Well that seemed… Cute…

He glanced at it once again, this time he realized that it had three prong legs that made him think that it could not move on its own. Then he noticed a wall behind it that he could put a portal on. He pulled out the portal gun and shot one quickly passed it as the sides of it opened, and it hissed in a creepy voice, "Hello, friend."

Wall•E then put the other portal on one part of the wall next to him, then went through it quickly to come up behind the white robot. He could see it searching for him again, "Target lost." Wall•E tilted his head, wondered what he had to do with it. It could not see him from behind, so at the moment he was safe, but he knew GLaDOS well enough to make this chamber difficult enough that it would just have one of these things.

"Could you come over here?" the robot asked, Wall•E came over to its side, and it still couldn't see him. It was a little shorter than him, and he waved his hand in front of its eye, "There you are." The sides of it opened again and bullets shot out. At this, Wall•E adjusted so that he only had his hand come down from above the bot and cover its eye, while easily avoiding the bullets that were flying rapidly from the openings on either side.

Suddenly some stray bullet hit his hand, and he yanked his hand back in surprise, accidently hitting the white robot in the face; it fell to its side, and yelped as it hit the ground, and it flailed around for a moment before the panicked shooting stopped and it folded back into itself, "No hard feelings." It said as it made a sound as if it were shutting down.

So that's all he had to do? Knock it over? Well, that would make it all so much easier. He walked passed another corner, and he stiffened from shock as dozens of the white bots pointed their search beams straight on him, although he calmed once more when he noticed that there was a glass wall between all of them and him. He moved closer, their gaze followed him closely. He glanced over to the side, where there was a Thermal Discouragement Beam coming from the ceiling, and a Re-directional cube right next to it.

He wondered if it could go through glass, then went over to it and used the third trigger on the portal gun to pick up the cube and position it under the beam, and he moved it to aim straight to the crowd of the white bots. One of them was caught in the beam, and it started to set on fire.

"Ow! OW! It burns!" Its tiny screams sent guilt running through Wall•E's circuits like cold rain, he tried to move it away from it, but by the time he did, the little robot exploded. Wall•E squeaked in dismay, and tried to move the beam away from them, but it caught several others and they, too, began to scream in pain.

"What are you doing?! You monster! They're one of us!" GLaDOS's voice came over the intercom, her voice shocked and panicked, which made Wall•E panic as well, and he tossed the cube away, and in that movement, accidently got hit by the thermal beam. He yelped in the sudden pain, but it did not burn him as it did to the other robots.

Holding the square part of his arm, he could barely hear GLaDOS starting to make a crying sound, and he felt extremely bad, until she somehow made that cry into a sinister laugh, "Those turrets don't even matter, you _have_ to destroy them in order to get through the test." If Wall•E had had a jaw, it would have dropped, "In fact, I may even give you a prize for standing up like that and burning them." Wall•E looked over at the turrets that still remained, they were still watching him carefully.

"So go ahead, _burn them,_" Her pitch dropped and she exaggerated her words and it made Wall•E's energy just curl with fear. As much as his morals controlled him, he could not find any other way to get out of the exit. With great regret, he grabbed the cube and burned the rest of the turrets until they exploded.

Although he only did so with his head turned away and making a series of loud noises to drown out their screams…


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

One… Two… Three! Eve leaped down from the ledge and through the other portal high above, the sense of falling from this high up and knowing that she had no way off stopping herself or slowing herself down made her head whirl and her fear spread faster than she was falling.

She aimed it just right, landing in yet another pit, everything else around it had the brown tiles, but at the bottom of the pit she could put a portal. As she fell into the pit, she shot a purple portal right below her, coming out of the blue portal once more and flying through the air with incredible speeds that it also made her head spin with overbearing fear of landing wrong.

There was the platform! She had aimed perfectly for that one too, getting the timing just right so that she landed on it as it moved from side to side. She pushed off with her gravity orb as hard as she could, so that she wouldn't slam into it so hard that she would break from the shock going through her body; or worse: breaking the glass of the platform and falling through it to land in a burning liquid far below.

"WOAH!" Eve waved her arms violently in strange circles, a motion that humans would do in the same situation. She had landed fine on it, but her speeds had pushed her a little too far, now she was on the verge of falling off the other side of the platform and into the huge pit of lava-like substance. She could see some spikes that were protruding from the depths of that part of the floor. She was leaning dangerously close to it, her torso was still somewhat in motion, and it slipped off the platform.

"AAAAHH!" She screamed, frantically spinning around to try and grab onto the platform. She just barely caught herself, but she was still in such a motion that it continued to pull her body down. She felt her arms start to part from her body enough that the pull that kept them together dissipated, and they broke off from her body temporarily.

Denial and dread washed over her as she continued to fall to her doom, her screams turned into vibrant horror that echoed through the dark room as she fell closer and closer to the poisoned spikes.

Although she was facing upwards, she could sense how close she was to the spikes. She closed her eyes and silenced her screaming, making her final wishes that Wall•E would find some way out of the Enrichment Center, and to help the colony and live the rest of his days to the fullest.

She slammed into the ground hard, and was launched hard into the air, aimed toward the place that she had been trying to get to the entire time. She opened her eyes, the smoothness of her trajectory and the lack of shock that went through her body made her wonder. That wasn't a spike of any kind that she had landed on. She tried to look back from where she had landed, but before she could, she came back down and smashed into the dark-colored ground face-first.

She lay there for a moment, regaining her senses as she started to turn upright again. She looked up to see that the cube she had been trying to get to the entire time was only inches from her face. She turned to the edge of the clearing and looked down at the huge pit below, some kind of gray rectangle with a blue light on it started to lower beneath the toxic waters.

"As much as I hate helping out in a test, I had to do that to you. That there was an Aerial Faith Plate, I think that was a nice introduction to the nice instrument, don't you?" Eve made a frustrated grunt as GLaDOS explained her actions over the intercom, "I'm sorry that I had to save your life, I promise I won't do it again. It's just that you are… Well… Valuable to me in a way." A mischievous chuckle arose deep in her voice. "_Don't_ make me do that again." Her voice became strict again and Eve tilted her head.

Valuable? How was Eve _valuable_ to GLaDOS? Was it because she could solve her puzzles usually with lightning speeds? Was it because she was interested in her glitch? Was it because Eve acted in some ways like a human in the ways of being able to emotionally suffer? Questions whirled through Eve's mind, trying to think of how she could be important to GLaDOS. No good answer came to mind.

"Anyway, continue with your testing." GLaDOS finished cheerfully. Eve narrowed an eye and stared down at the Aerial Faith Plate that had disappeared under the floor. She thought for a moment more about how she could be 'valuable' to GLaDOS, then she grabbed the cube with the third trigger of her portal gun arm and waited for the moving platform to come close enough to her that she could get on it correctly and go over to the exit and finish that chamber and be done with the questioning of that room.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

PANG! PANG-PANG! PANG!

Bullets whirled around Wall•E and threatened to puncture into his front as he charged at the turret. He dodged them the best that he could, using a cube as a shield and battling ram. He hid his head behind it, so that he couldn't get shot in his optics and perhaps become partly blind and have more difficulty with speed tasks in the next tests.

A bewildered scream and panicked flailing of bullets shooting at a wall indicated to him that he had knocked down the turret. After it stopped shooting and announced "Shutting down," then he placed the cube down, pausing to take in the new environment and find out the next half of the test. Then he noticed something moving up the side of the dark platform he stood on, when he looked at it, he realized it was a button.

He placed the cube gently to the side, so that it did not fall into the bottomless pit below the narrow passage way that led him to this new clearing. Then he turned around and pressed the button. Immediately, alarms went off, things began to move, and he freaked out, hiding behind underneath the cube.

As he hid, he watched helplessly as doors in the walls opened, and red search beams stared straight ahead. Wall•E's brows sprung up. Twenty… No thirty… No…

About fifty or more doors with turrets that were in position opened in rows of five. They went in a complete circle around the chamber. Wall•E looked way up above, zooming in to see how far it went. That's when he realized that there was a platform that he needed to get onto to get out of there. Of course, it was above every single row of turrets. He shrunk down low into his cube, trying to make sure the turrets didn't see him, but it was too late.

"Deploying."

"Hello."

"Target acquired."

"I see you."

"There you are."

"AAAAAAHHH!" Wall•E screamed, grabbing the cube and his portal gun and racing fast like lightning to try and get out the way that he had come in, hiding in the in-cove that was at the entrance. He looked back at the huge clearing, then he noticed that he could portal into the rooms with the turrets, or at least most of them.

There were some rooms that were completely dark, and some that you could only put a portal on the top, side, or behind. But if he had to get into the rooms, he would have to do it fast, because the ones across from them would be able to see him and he would be doomed. He stretched his neck to try and see the ledge that he needed to get on to get to the chamber lock.

He could not see how he could get up there passed the turret rooms, but then he noticed that there was two tilted walls above two of the turret rooms, on different levels. He connected that with momentum immediately, but when he looked for the place that he would probably land, he saw that it would only make him fall to his death. The place in the center wasn't helpful, either, for it was brown, and he couldn't put portals on it.

Wait… Cube… He had to have gone through the previous part of the chamber to get a cube for a reason… He looked around, there seemed to be no places where there was a button. What if the button was in one of the rooms with the turrets? Which meant he was forced to have to carry the cube with one hand and shoot portals with his portal gun in the other hand; it wouldn't be that accurate, and hopefully accuracy wasn't the key in this chamber.

He adjusted to grab the cube with one hand and be able to carry the portal gun with the other. Then he searched himself over to see whether or not he was missing anything. When he concluded that he hadn't, he nodded to himself and began. Placing the red portal on the wall next to him, and shooting the yellow one in the highest room that he portal in one of the highest rooms he could shoot into.

As quick as he could, he put the cube in front of him and went through the portal, hearing the turrets of the opposite side target onto him, and he came up behind the other turret. He accidently crashed into the turret, and it fell to its doom. Feeling sorry for it but knowing he had to keep things going, he cubed up mostly and hid behind the cube, looked at all of the rooms as bullets flew passed him and clanked against the cube.

There was one room that was on the next level above, and all of the walls and ceiling could hold a portal, but it was glassed off except for one hole in the middle. He snuck his hand around and shot a red portal into that room. Thankfully, it made it in fine so he backed up through the portal, knocking over the turret that was behind the glass barrier, and placed the yellow portal on the opposite wall so that the other turrets couldn't shoot through the portal to get to him.

Thankful to be behind glass, Wall•E turned toward the back of the room, "Ooooh…" He whistled in amazement. In front of him was another clearing, but _bigger_. Much, _much_ bigger. He looked around it, there was the button! Right in the middle of the room, surrounded by… Was that water? It seemed probably easy to wade through.

He placed the cube down in it, going to use it to stand on and he'd just hop along with it to get to the middle; but as soon as he touched the cube to the water, it started to sizzle and burn up, so he immediately pulled it off of it.

"Careful, that Aperture Science Emancipation Acid really takes a liking to metals of all sorts." GLaDOS said. It had been a while since she had spoken. Something started to move up above, and he looked up to see a huge screen coming out of the wall. Some kind of rectangular metal thing with a yellow light in the center was on it. Then it started to move some more and GLaDOS explained, "I'm installing a big screen television into every extremely difficult chamber. So you can have the pressure of knowing I'm watching you as you stare blankly at this big empty room. Now, I bid you good luck."

Wall•E groaned as he glanced around, wishing that this would just be over with. He wondered what was going on with Eve, she was probably doing a better job than he was… Wall•E sighed in exhaustion, his power level was started to get low, and if he didn't find a way out of there soon, he may be in some big trouble…


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Eve got pounded into the ground again, right at the exit of the chamber. Finally! She carefully got up and looked back at the extremely hard quadruple flip that she had just done. She just hoped she didn't have to do it again.

She sighed and went to the chamber lock, only to pause right before she entered the elevator. She thought she heard something… She went over to one of the giant, curved fluorescent screens and listened. It could be a chamber next to GLaDOS again, it could be another test subject, or it could be Wall•E. The thought of being able to see Wall•E again got her excited.

"That won't do you any good, Probe." Came GLaDOS's voice, Eve growled.

"WALL•E!" She yelled at GLaDOS, hoping she understood what she wanted.

"I find no reason to put you two together. I already have a cooperative testing team, and at least [i]they[/i] can be reassembled." Eve's inner circuits sank and drew cold electricity through her main core. Both the fact that she would not be able to see Wall•E and the fact that GLaDOS had to remind her that if she were to break, she would probably not be rebuilt just cut through her like an electric saw.

"Now then. Continue testing." Eve turned slowly, but didn't move toward the elevator, instead, she smashed herself into the huge screen behind her that showed the assembly of the Aerial Faith Plate; making it shatter. She shrunk down, letting the pieces of it fall on her without any attention drawn too how much it actually hurt her.

She was just now admitting to the reality that she hadn't believed before, and now it was starting to crash down on her. She stared blankly at the floor. She was never going to be able to leave this place… Eve formed her portal gun into her arm again and smothered her fingers over her eyes. She was probably never going to be able to see Wall•E again, his power level was probably getting low and of course GLaDOS would never let him have the chance to get into the sunlight long enough to charge.

If GLaDOS kept pushing Eve to do better problem solving faster, then she was surely going to overheat her main core and probably shut down at the wrong time, and there she would lay until GLaDOS decides to pull her apart and use her pieces for things. Even if she was 'valuable' to GLaDOS in any way, it wouldn't make her any less cruel.

"Wall•E…" Eve whispered, not knowing what had become of him since she last saw him. She whined and moaned, trying to get the attention of GLaDOS, so that she would finally realized how much Wall•E meant to her. Although GLaDOS never said anything.

"Deploying." The word came up beside her and it scared her out of her shell. She jumped, then heard the same voice from the other side, "I see you." She turned just in time to see two white robots with red beams shining on her. She thought they were harmless until bullets cascaded hard against her shell, and she had no other choice but to hide in the safety of the elevator. It immediately closed and started to move out of there.

She had no idea what those things were, but she knew that they were dangerous and should not be messed with. Although she had heard them shooting, if she listened through the walls. She had hoped she would never encounter them, then it dawned on her… What if Wall•E had got caught up in them and…

The elevator stopped and the doors opened, "I know you're going to love this new test. It will teach you a lesson about breaking your original programming…" Eve sighed and took out her portal gun, but as soon as she started to go through the entrance with the Emancipation Grill, it started to make a burning feeling go throughout her body.

"AAAHH!" She yelped and hollered at the pain that pierced her body, she tried to back out of it, but was already somehow coated in the grill from top to bottom, filling in every crease and covering her entire self. She looked down at herself once she was passed it and her eyes widened at how she looked shinier, and light blue streaks dashed across her body at random.

Curious to see why she would need this—Emancipation… Seal? Suit? Coat? For now, she was just going to call it the Grill Coat—she went down the chamber to look at what she had to do. There were four buttons behind glass boxes with a small entrance, the sign that their blue dots led to had the symbol that it was a timed button. So she had to be really fast for this one. She clicked a button to see how long it took to deactivate.

It deactivated too fast, there was no way that she could do it in enough ti—

"EVAH!"

"WALL•E!" She yelled as she turned and saw him racing toward her. This time, there was no glass to keep each other back. They both raced toward each other, arms outstretched.

As they held each other close, there was one thing they couldn't do: keep a hold of each other. The Grill Coat burned into him, and she could tell it was. He had his own Grill Coat as well, and it burned at Eve. The two grills would never let them touch without it sending extremely painful shock waves all the way through their bodies.

It was the only thing that could hurt them more than being apart…


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

Wall•E followed Eve through the doorway and into the next part of the test. As they entered the room, they both gazed around to take it in and try and see what they had to do. Wall•E ended up bringing his gaze up and around and all over the place. He had started to notice that there were some keys to a lot of the chambers.

One key that had helped Wall•E through some extremely hard tests was: 'When in doubt, look up.' Usually if something useful that is up higher is present, that could mean the momentum trick, or maybe just to get higher. Then there was another key that he realized was starting to take up a bigger part in the problem solving: 'Get there, then solve it.'

Wall•E couldn't help but look at Eve's hand as it dangled beside her as her blue eyes took in and measured up the environment. No doubt, Wall•E was holding her back with his lack of understanding how things work. And in these passed tests that they had worked on together _needed_ both of them to work together at an even pace. When he had been introduced to an orange gel-like substance, it had taken Eve only moments of testing it out to find out its abilities, properties, and restrictions. Even after watching her mess with it for a while, he still didn't understand until he tried it out for himself.

Then Wall•E noticed that habit had tried to take over him, his hand was outstretched, wanting to grab hold of Eve's precious white fingers. What brought his attention back to the reality was when he saw the fraying of particles in the Emancipation Grill Cover that was all over Eve as his hand reached close enough to it. He remembered the pain she had been in when his touch had sent electric charges through her circuits. The same thing had happened with him, and it was just so hard to realized that a mere brush passed each other would make everything only worse.

Finally, Wall•E dragged himself to look at other things, although Eve's pure white shell and angelic glow only tore his attention from the task at hand, to his beloved. Watching her also made him wonder what she was thinking about the test and its solution. He was then distracted thinking about what it would be like if they could find a way to talk to each other without a sound. Something wireless… Internal… Perhaps wi—

"Gerr-ah, err-rah." Eve pointed her right arm out, it folded out into her portal gun immediately, and she shot at a panel that was hard to see from where they were, and then she went to the closest wall and put the opposite portal there and used that as a peek hole to see a different angle of the chamber.

Smart thing to do, Wall•E would never have thought of that. Again he was put down, remembering how smart Eve was and how stupid he must seem to her. What if during all the testing, she decided that she didn't love him anymore because he wasn't as smart and pretty as she is? Then he wondered whether he should just try to show her otherwise or confront her…

Wall•E noticed a button that was a little ways away and tucked into the wall, he raced over to it. As she was about to reach the cleft that it was in, he failed to see that there was no ground beneath it, although when he did, it was already too late and he could not stop. He started to wail in fear, trying to grab the edge of the platform he had been on. His fingertips on one hand kept a hold, but it was very loose and it started to slip. He looked down below and saw the endlessness that lay below him.

"WALL•E!" Eve shrieked, looming over him, helpless. She was unable to grab him and pull him up, and unable to fly under his and catch him. He stopped his struggling for a moment, looking into her wild eyes. Meanwhile he tried all he could to pull himself up, but was too weighted.

"Evah…" He said to try and calm her down, he didn't like when she was unhappy, mostly if he was the one who was causing it. Something in her expression changed, and she lowered herself, reaching a hand down to grab his hand, pain clearly flaring up as it also flared up in him. She folded her portal gun back and used her other arm to reach down and grab the bottom of his cube. Her eyes distorted, the electric shock penetrating deep into her core, just as it was for him.

Together, they fought through to pain and he was pulled back onto solid ground; then the real struggle came, Eve looked him over, and he could clearly read her expression, it said that she wanted to hug him. They had already gone through too much pain to want to burn each other from the inside-out.

Their eyes met, but they did not speak. A mechanic rustling came up behind him where the ledge was. When he turned, he realized that a platform moved into place. A deep, quiet chuckling echoed through the huge chamber, "Looks like I forgot to put that there. My bad." GLaDOS chuckled again before the intercom turned off and it was back to silence.

Eve made an angry hissing sound and glared around the chamber. GLaDOS was trying to do something cruel. When he thought back, he remembered that he _had_ seen that platform there when he went over to the button. She must have pulled it out from under him. Why would she be so cruel? If it weren't for Eve's and his ability to push pain aside to help each other, he would have fallen to his doom.

But what if that was what GLaDOS really wanted?


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Okay, just put a blue one there, and put a purple one there and then uh… Eve took another gander at the environment. Wall•E was waiting beside her, standing on the button that turned on the Thermal Discouragement Beam. She looked at the receiver, then looked at the walls that they could put portals on.

With strange dread, she went over to Wall•E and tried to explain where he needed to place his two portals. This test required all four of them, and if it were to go into the wrong place, it would activate another receiver that brought down a crusher from above. Eve paused, wanting to trust him to shoot in the right place.

"Err rouw." She pointed to the end of the laser that she had moved; then motioned for him to follow her a little ways off and shoot the other in another place.

Thankfully, he took his time to aim up the beam with the portals and to the right receiver. She sighed in relief as the exit door opened up. He followed her down the stairs, but she couldn't help but have the feeling that he thought that he was holding her back.

Was he? He was… Or… _Was_ he?

She stopped, and he went a bit forward into the next chamber and looked around. She watched him, wondering what he was thinking, what he was feeling… It was so hard to connect with him when they could not talk much. She started thinking; maybe there was a way to update their vocabulary.

The movement of Emancipation Acid caught her attention, and she finally looked away and examined the chamber. It was huge, but she had been in bigger chambers, although she could see that everything involved momentum.

She looked it over, the fact that Wall•E had trouble with some speed tricks made it not anywhere as easy as it would be if she had two portal guns and was alone. Maybe she could assist him with the momentum… No, there were Emancipation Grills between the launching plates. The only way was to…

Eve groaned as she struggled to find out the solution, she would have to do the momentum things first. But there was something wrong… There was no way to do it, Emancipation Grills were in the way, and they would cancel out her portals as soon she passed through them. She glanced around the chamber a little bit more, sighing after not finding something.

Then she noticed a light bridge generator, but no light bridge. She growled once more, glancing around to take more of a look around.

"Evah!" She heard from behind her, she looked over and saw Wall•E pointing frantically at something, she looked over and saw a small passage way. As she watched, Wall•E snuck into it carefully and then she heard the sound of a button being pressed. A light bridge suddenly activated in the middle of the chamber above the Emancipation Acid.

Wall•E slid back out of the little passage and gave Eve a smile. Something about him just made her giggle, that's one thing that she really liked about him. He was always there to help, and always made her laugh. The urge to hug him in thanks only hurt her, knowing that she couldn't. Eve sighed again, but he came up to her and made a comforting sound.

"Thank yeuw." She said carefully, and he nodded in response.

Eve turned to the rest of the chamber, now that the light bridge was there, she could easily do it, with Wall•E's help, of course.

With that, she began to explain to her beloved about what his job was, and told him what she was going to do. "Careful." She reminded him. He would be in control of the light bridges as she crossed the place back and forth. If he were to accidently move a portal when she was on part of the light bridge, she would fall into the Emancipation Acid.

Her whole fate was all up to him…


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"WALL•E!" Eve screamed as Wall•E scratched at the edge of the platform, trying to get a grip to get himself pulled up to get up there. Eve's eyes were wider than Wall•E had ever seen them, because she knew she could do nothing to help him, she was holding a button down to keep the platform from collapsing all together, and there was no cube to put on top of it.

"WALL•E!" She screamed again, Wall•E started to slide off, but he scrapped his hands along the platform for another grip, his treads trying to reach up awkwardly to get on top of it. He pulled himself up as best as he could, barely being able to crawl completely on before collapsing face down to gather his thoughts and calm himself down again.

"Wall•E…!" Eve said more calmly, and yet still pretty concerned. He lifted a hand to show her that he was fine. He heard her sigh in relief as he started to push himself upright again. Then he looked down at the pit that lay below him, it looked like it was never ending, and he was thankful that he hadn't fallen down there.

…Like his portal gun had in the process of him trying to get up. Now that was the new concern. Without a portal gun, he could not help Eve get through the tests. Which means they would have to just sit there, not able to do anything.

"So, lost your Handheld Portal Device, did you? Well, you're lucky we have spares." For once, he was glad to hear GLaDOS speak once more. Then he got off the platform and went to the door, it opened when the camera next to it acknowledged that Eve and him were there and ready to go through.

When they did, he noticed that there were two tubes that came from the ceiling, one of them blue and the other was orange. Wall•E tilted his head in curiosity, then looked up into the orange one. It was a big pipe, he didn't know what it was used for, but he had a feeling it was going to be useful in a mome—

WAM!

Something black and white with a yellow stripe fell onto his head, he freaked out for a moment and cubed up. He heard Eve laugh, and popped his optics out to see her handing him a new portal gun. He grabbed it thankfully and looked her in the eyes for a moment. Then tilted his head slowly, she blinked slowly and for some reason he felt his main core seem to swirl in joy. Rejoicing that she was with him again.

She let go of the portal gun and he accidently dropped it, quickly picking it back up to pretend like he really didn't do it. It made her laugh, he loved when she laughed, it was such a beautiful laugh.

He was brought back to reality for a moment, some kind of sound that was in the next chamber was getting his attention. He walked through the entrance, Eve close behind, and they both started to look at the chamber. It seemed like they were just getting bigger and bigger every time. He thought for a moment and looked at the things that they would have to use to get through the places.

"Hee-Wroo" Came some kind of sound suddenly from behind them, it was kind of high-pitched and mechanical sounding. Wall•E yelled in surprise and cubed up, not even turning to see what the sound was. Wall•E listened hard, and heard Eve turn, and give an interested, "Oooh."

Sensing that it may be alright for him to come out, he came out of his cube form and turned to see two robots. They were a little bit taller than Wall•E and Eve, but something about them could be considered… Familiar…

One robot was short with a rounded body a blue eye in the middle of the sphere. The other one was a bit taller than the blue one, and had a more elongated shape, almost like one of the turrets, and they had an orange eye. All four robots seemed extremely curious about each other. Except they didn't have an Emancipation coating over their bodies.

Somewhat by habit, Wall•E put out a hand to give them a handshake, "Wall•E." The robots seemed a bit taken by the handshake, like they had never shook hands before. Wall•E looked over at Eve, so she could introduce herself.

"Eve." She said, slowly folding her portal gun back into her arm and then cautiously giving each one a handshake. Then they both waited for the new robots to introduce themselves.

"Brrreeh." The orange one said, pointing toward itself. That was the same voice that had scared Wall•E, the high-pitched one. Then it pointed at the blue one, "Brrreh." Wall•E tilted his head in confusion. Then he started to realize that they may not be able to say words at all. That would be a shame, Wall•E could imagine what he would do if he couldn't even say his own name.

"Oh good, you met Blue and Orange. You can also call Blue, Atlas and Orange, P-body. You guys will be working together as a team for the next few—" GLaDOS stopped for a moment, then she did a deep chuckle, "Oh… Looks like I've got some business to attend to, continue testing. I'll be recording you for further analysis." Wall•E glanced at Eve, noticing that Orange had the same gun as him, and probably shot the same colors. "I'll be sending two new portal guns to differentiate the colors. Blue, Wall•E, go place your guns in the Equipment Recovery Annex."

Just as Wall•E was about to freak out because he didn't see where the Annex was and _what_ it was, Eve pointed back the way that they came from as part of the wall opened up.

"Ooh!" Wall•E went passed Orange and Blue and put his gun in the compartment, Atlas then came over and did the same. Then they turned to the tubes and two portal guns fell from above. Atlas had one with a green stripe, and Wall•E's had a dark orange stripe. They both came out of the area and placed portals randomly on the walls.

Atlas had a green and light blue, and Wall•E had a dark orange and a violet. Odd colors… But they would do. As long as he remembered what colors they were.

As the four robots examined the chamber on the edge of an endless pit, Wall•E felt dread as he realized that they would have to use _eight_ portals… They were never going to finish this chamber before Wall•E ran out of power…


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

"Wall•E!" Eve called down to Wall•E and pointed at one of the walls for him to place one of his portals, he did as she said. She pointed to another place right next to herself, and he did that too. "Atlas." She turned to him, who was on the same level that she was on, while P-body was far below, even below Wall•E.

Atlas was looking at a button that was off in the distance over a pool of the toxic waste, which was what they were trying to go for to drop a cube and use it for a big button that was up on this level. Eve then pointed down by P-body and then at another place next to her to aim over the acid pool. Then she looked at each of the things that were going on. This was timed, and had to be done in only moments.

Wall•E's portals were going to align a Thermal Discouragement Beam to its receiver, and Eve had portals to speed-click two timed buttons that would activate the beam. The receiver would activate a light bridge; when it was, Atlas would have to run across the bridge and press the button and P-body had her portals set up to catch the cube with the light bridge as well.

Eve took another look around for just a little bit longer, hoping all was aimed up right and all the robots where ready. She sighed and then took her stance, "Thrrr-ee, two, one!" She counted down and moved as fast as she could, pressing one button with one hand and then reaching her other hand over through her portals to click the other. Not even wanting to watch how everyone else was doing.

She managed a little peek, and she watched as Atlas raced across the light bridge, and P-body was standing on the bridge down below; ready to catch the cube. She measured up how much time they had to do their things and… They would make it! Excited, Eve came over to watch them as Atlas leaped off the light bridge and pressed the cube, which P-body grabbed quickly and was off of the light bridge before you knew it.

Success! Eve shot a portal down by Wall•E to come up with her, then one over by P-body, and she put the cube on the button and opened the exit door. Everyone cheered, even as the timer ran out and the thermal beam and light bridge shut off. Eve looked back at Atlas, and saw him look over into some kind of cavern that had was on his side of the toxic pool, suddenly shooting into it and then appearing from the portal that he had had on the exit level.

P-body and Atlas gave each other high fives, and Eve could only look over at Wall•E, the same look of grief was in his eyes underneath the cheering as the look in her eyes. After a moment, they decided to get through the door. The camera noted that all four were there and then opened the next chamber.

When they all came in and looked the place over, they came across an extremely deep pit that separated about half the room again, with the toxic waste in it as well. As Eve looked the chamber over, she couldn't help but see P-body and Atlas looking down the pit. Maybe they had never been in a test with that deep of a pit befo—

P-body's elbow shot forward into Atlas's back, and he fell down and down into the toxins. "NO!" Eve screamed as she raced to the edge, to watch in horror as she watched Atlas burn up in the acid, sparks flying everywhere. Eve stared after the robotic disaster below her for a moment more before she slowly looked back at P-body with huge eyes.

P-body was just standing there laughing. Horrified, Eve went forward and reached up to hit P-body in the eye hard enough to fall to the floor.

"Evah!" Wall•E cried from behind her, trying to get her to calm down. She struggled, but soon enough was able to lean back and relax. She then turned from P-body and looked at the chamber again, wondering if there was a way they could solve it with only six portals.

Some deep sound came from behind her, and she suddenly turned to see Atlas standing there, he waved and then went over to P-body and tore off her body from her entire self. Wall•E and Eve only watched them with confusion as they fought for it and P-body took it back but smashed it onto Atlas's head before putting it back on.

Eve glanced over at Wall•E with a confused look, both wondering how Atlas was there and wondering how they could seriously be messing around and laughing so much when P-body had actually _murdered_ Atlas. Then she realized that they could maybe have come from the tubes that had given Wall•E his new gun before, maybe they could be rebuilt automatically.

Before Eve could shake off the situation and then continue with solving the problem, a sudden shaking went through the entire place. It startled Eve, and caused Wall•E to yelp in surprise. She looked around to find out the cause.

Suddenly, the whole one side of the chamber started to close in, causing the toxic waste to empty out into nothingness. Eve dodged a pane of glass that was on the other side of the chamber that had just crashed down.

"RRRUUNN!"


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

Wall•E dodged another panel as it crashed down from the wall that was crashing in, "AAHH!" He folded himself up and rolled out of the way of another one. Eve and the other robots were ahead of him, but there was truly nowhere to go. They were just trying to get away from the collapsing wall.

He happened to glance over and see that something huge was crushing the wall towards them. He yelled as he realized that the other robots were trying to pry open the exit door, but wasn't really succeeding. If only Eve had her plasma gun to try to get through, it would be a lot easier.

Frantic with panic, Wall•E went to the place next to the door and tore rapidly at the edge of one of the panels. They had to get out of there, at any cost. Suddenly he heard a whooshing and saw that the door had opened up on its own. He waited to see if it was at least kind of safe, Eve went through quickly, and Wall•E followed fast to insure it didn't suddenly close.

"In here!" The intercom came on and GLaDOS spoke, which was a surprise, but they could only hope that she was talking to help. Another panel in the side of the stair way opened up and Eve raced it, and Wall•E followed fast. They landed on a rail, leading off away from the crusher that was coming. "Quickly!" Why was GLaDOS caring about them?

The crusher got closer, crushing the other side of the wall and causing it to crash down as well. When he looked back, he watched in horror as the escape panel closed before P-body and Atlas could get through. He freaked out, hoping the same fate wouldn't happen to them somewhere.

"GO!" Eve yelled, clearing having seen that to, but she went forward as fast as she could, and he followed extremely close behind. Suddenly she pulled out her portal gun and shot off in the distance, and then on a panel that was ahead. She disappeared into it and Wall•E was fast after her. Which reminded him that he had accidently lost his own portal gun.

They started to fall, then landed on some kind of other chamber, then continued to race in the opposite direction. Then they leaped down on the other side and landed on another rail. They continued to a new compartment, and a door opened for them and they hid inside.

Something surprised Wall•E suddenly, the extremely loud gears of the crusher stopped. He lifted a hand to get Eve to stop, then he stayed quiet to listen to it. It had, in fact, stopped.

"Oh great, she escaped… Anyway, I'll open the next door and you can get a new portal gun, then you can go and continue your testing." Wall•E and Eve looked at each other for a moment as the door opened. Eve gave him a suspicious look, and he wasn't sure he wanted to continue testing either. They went into the next room, it looked like an office, but then the roof opened up and a tube came down.

Immediately, Eve looked up to it and shot passed it to a place outside of the chamber, then caught the other portal gun with her other hand and tossed it to Wall•E. Then Eve shot at the wall and gestured for him to follow.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. You should stop, and return to the next test." Wall•E shook his head as GLaDOS tried to get them to stop, but he went through the portal anyway. "Stop that right now!"

"Err-rouw!"Eve called from somewhere above. When he looked back the portal he noticed Eve had gotten another portal up there, so he went inside of that one. Some kind of angry grunt came from the speakers. It only brought questions, who was _she_? He knew she wasn't talking about Eve because GLaDOS had helped them escape.

Eve was busy trying to find another place to get to, then she suddenly stopped and brought her gaze slowly down to Wall•E, "Frrrree…" She said slowly, it took a moment for him to realize what she meant.

They had escaped…

They were free…


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

Wall•E lay against the wall, exhaustion started to take him over; his solar power indicator started to beep slowly. His new portal gun was at his side as he relaxed. Eve could only stand there and watch him as he got weaker and weaker. He needed a break, they had been trying to escape for hours, and it wasn't helping him. They had probably been in the center for almost a week, but she had been so busy that she couldn't really tell.

She still needed to charge as well, her arms were getting tired and she was starting to get slower at her reactions and decisions. She was leaned back against the other wall, her eyes closed as she thought through something to do next. She peaked an eye open and saw Wall•E's eyes were closed too. Who knows what he was thinking.

She wished she could talk to him with full sentences. He had so much struggle to say things, and sometimes she could easily find out what he meant, but other times it took many minutes before she taught him how to say things. She sometimes got a little frustrated at him, sometimes even mad. She was starting to get annoyed that he called her 'Evah' instead of 'Eve'.

Wall•E's eyes started to open and she looked away, starting to look for something to do next. He started to shuffle around and she looked back at him, "Wall•E." She started to get up, and he did so as well and grabbed his portal gun, although his eyes were still closed. He went up to her and looked her in the eyes. Eve could tell that the Emancipation Coat was just killing him not to hug her. The same went for her, being apart for so long and then forced to stay apart just tore them apart.

His eyes were dull with his low energy and she looked at him with worry and whined lightly in sympathy. They took a moment before they looked around the open area. Something about it seemed so empty and silent.

Something was wrong… It was _too_ quiet for Eve's comfort.

But she was still lost, she didn't know what she could do next to get around. But she also didn't even know where she was truly going to. Were they going to only escape? Or were they going to find a way to get rid of GLaDOS and save all others who were stuck in this place?

No matter what they decided, Wall•E needed to charge from sunlight. She sighed in stressed frustration.

"Brrr…Brri…" Wall•E started to say something, and Eve looked at him, "Brrrid-d-jah."

"Bridge?" She asked, and he nodded, "Bridge?" He nodded again, then pointed below the railing that they were standing on and then pointed up.

"Dow-wt, look up." Doubt, look up? Eve looked where he had pointed. Wall•E placed one portal below on a panel, then he reached up and shot the other one on another place above them. Then he handed his portal gun to her and climbed over the railing, then reached over and took it back.

Then he leaped down and Eve watched him with wide eyes, hoping he knew what he was doing. Thankfully, he made it through the portal, Eve looked up and watched as he came out of another place and flew across the open area and landed on another balcony.

Eve gave out a cheer, and Wall•E motioned her to follow. She climbed over the railing as well and leaped down into the portal as well, flying across the way and onto the balcony with Wall•E. He pointed up and she looked up to see a light bridge farther above that she hadn't seen before. He pointed up with his portal gun and shot another portal a bit higher, above the light bridge.

He climbed over the rail on that balcony and fell into the portal again to land on the light bridge and Eve followed. Eve laughed in cheer for him, thanking him that he saw that. She knew the light bridge was made from real sunlight.

Although one thing wasn't clear, why was this light bridge here, out of the test chambers? Hopefully this wasn't a trap of any kind. She looked over to where the light bridge was generating. She followed it along quickly, hoping it wouldn't shut off and cause her to fall into some kind of trap. Wall•E felt close behind her.

The light bridge was very long, and it was coming from some kind of open place. When they finally got to it, Eve squealed, realizing that it was the actual generator for the light bridges. She went over to it, sunshine coming through a small hole in the ceiling, a loud humming creating the bridge.

Unfortunately, she looked at the generator and realized they wouldn't be able to crawl up it. Although there [i]was[/i] something they could do to get the sun beams into Wall•E's solar panel.

When she went over to another part of the room, she realized that there was another light beam going toward another wall. But instead of being blue, it looked bright like sun rays. Although it went into another thing that brought out another bridge that looked like the filtering generator. She went over to the light rays between them and placed a hand through it. She felt warmth, and her fingers went through the light easily.

Perfect! She gestured to Wall•E to take a look at it, and showed her that she could do that without any damage of any time. He got the idea and opened his solar panel and lay down on his front so it could have it receive right. As glad as she was when she heard the familiar recharging sound on him, she also became extremely tired.

She blinked slowly, her systems became slow and her arm started to droop, "…Shut down…" She said lightly, and she saw Wall•E look at her as she closed herself up and fell into sleep mode.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

Fully charge and ready to go, Wall•E followed Eve around as they went through some places. They came over to a shiny metal door, then she put her fingers in between the two doors and pulled them apart. She stepped to the side, "Err-rouw." She motioned with her head for him to go underneath her arms to get through.

He slipped through quickly and then grabbed the doors to pull apart as she went through as well. She nodded in thanks and examined the room. Looking around, Wall•E saw a broken window, he examined it and noticed there was a test chamber right there, "Evah." He pointed through the window and she looked in as well.

"Hmm…" It was a room with a cube on a button, a discouragement beam, and a light bridge. The exit door was already open, meaning that someone had already finished the chamber. While Eve looked out at the test chamber, Wall•E happened to look up, seeing a huge fan above him. He tilted his head, and saw some of the wall, something was colorful on it, and he wanted to go take a look.

He shot a portal up there and then one on the wall beside him, and immediately he was shocked. There were coffee cups scattered everywhere, although in neat rounds around the fan. Eve looked through the portal too, and followed Wall•E when he went into it. She went over to a large painting spread across the wall. It was mainly a woman with an orange suit on that looked like she was asleep. There was a graph and a lot of random words that he could barely read. So he went to another picture down a hallway. A lot of words he could not understand were all over it, except it was just a giant picture of a face.

Something about the face seemed almost familiar, and he looked down at some words that he could barely make out, but he could make up something: 'S.F. CEO'

Something about those letters were familiar, too familiar. Wall•E had seen something with those initials for hundreds and hundreds of years every day as he came home. The voice echoed in his head, even now: _Because at BnL, space is the final FUN-tier!_

Wall•E fell backwards against the opposite wall, dropping his portal gun and squeaking slightly in constant surprise.

"Wall•E!" Eve yelled. Wall•E couldn't say anything, only point at the picture frantically and keep pushing his treads against the ground, trying to stay far from the picture. Something about it was freaking him out, something ominous that seemed like it was speaking to him; reminding him of so many memories, good and bad.

Eve looked over at the picture, but only looked back at her with confusion. "See… See… See-ee- oh!" He was trying to tell her 'CEO' but he was still freaking out from the words that seemed to secretly speak to him from the painting.

"CEO?" She asked, he nodded frantically, "CE—OH! Shelby!" Wall•E nodded more.

Somehow, BnL and Aperture Science were… Connected? How could that be? How did Shelby Forthright get into the Enrichment Center? Or… Did he get caught…?

Then another thought came into his head, what if he was stuck in the Enrichment Center while Wall•E was working on Directive Cleanup? What happened to Shelby? Why did he get into here? Was BnL a thing that was brought off of Aperture Science?

Eve put a hand on the picture, clearly trying to look deep to see the resemblance. Suddenly the wall broke, and she almost fell it. There was another room beyond the hole that she had made. Wall•E hated to have to do it, but there may be more clues in there. So he kicked the rest of the wall down enough to get inside.

He then gestured Eve to go in first and he followed. When they went in, they also found another place with pictures on the wall. Although now there were pictures of some person with scribbles on their face and they were holding a cube with pink hearts on it.

"Went insssssane…" Eve touched the wall calmly. Next to the picture of the man was one of what looked like GLaDOS, folding into some kind of whirling explosion above her.

Wall•E and Eve looked at each other slowly, they both knew what it all meant. This meant that Shelby Forthright had worked at the Aperture Science Center and had been there when some test subject destroyed GLaDOS. And as she was placed into suspension, Shelby was left to roam the broken down center alone, clearly going insane. Something about that cube seemed like it was very important to him; like it was a companion to him in some way.

Later, Wall•E and Eve found some stairs down to another opening in the top of the test chamber. They looked down, wondering how it had been solved. Suddenly the panel behind them started to push forward, closing the way to get into the secret compartment. They both fell to the ground, then lay in a little pile of confusion before getting up once again.

Wall•E looked up to see that the panel had closed. Then he looked at the exit door that was open, but high above the rest of the chamber. Eve got up and looked around as well. She put a portal at the end of the light bridge, and they both noticed that the other portal had become inactive. Although she continued what she was doing. She placed the other on a place near her and went through the portals, then shot a portal opposite of the broken glass window they had looked through before.

When they went through there, they both saw that the metal door had closed, and there was no way to get into that office area or the place with the paintings anymore

There was nothing they could think of doing except to go through that door and find a way out. Wall•E could just sense in the air that something was wrong with GLaDOS, something _extremely_ wrong. By now, she would have found out they were in there and would have done something dastardly to capture them and—

"OH! Oh look! Look what we have here! A couple of robots in the middle of a test," Some male voice with a British accent came onto the intercom. Something about it freaked Wall•E out and he hid behind Eve. A big screen came out of the wall to reveal a robotic sphere with a blue eye, kind of like Atlas.

"So. I guess this means that… We are going to have some fun. After all, that would mean I have… One, two… Three test subjects! Fancy that! That's a lot better than… Well, uh, none… So yeah, I'll sit here, watching you, and... You… You just... Keep doing what you were doing… Before... I mean." Wall•E and Eve exchanged uneasy glances.

"I'm Wheatley, by the way. And don't try to escape anywhere, either, because I will definitely... Well, possibly... Most likely, I will—no, definitely. I will _definitely_ have you killed… If you try to do that… Yeah. Just… Just finish the test."


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

"That door. Uhh, right there. NO NO NO! _THAT_ DOOR!" Eve went over to the opposite door, Wall•E following close behind her. She was trying all that she could to only annoy him. She wasn't really comfortable with him in charge, ever since he came on, things kept on shaking and sometimes things would fall apart. It was very ominous.

"NO! NO! AH!" Wheatley yelled in frustration. Suddenly a panel came crashing down in front of the door Eve was about to go into. "_That_ one, to your _left_." Frightened, and finally unable to annoy him with trying to get into that door, Eve motioned Wall•E to follow her into that door.

It was an odd place to put them. It must be somewhere in an older part of the facility, because the doors weren't automatic, they had handles. Eve went over and opened the door, Wall•E was close behind. It came into another room, this time there were two doorways on either side. They looked back and forth. Another screen with Wheatley on it came out of the wall between the doorways.

"So. Perhaps, in this part… Can you… You know, separate… Kinda, go to each door… Apart…" Wheatley stumbled along, and Eve quickly moved as close as she could to Wall•E without touching him. "So, uh… Alright, now… Come on, little robots! Who's a good robot? Who's a good, um, that won't work… Just… Just go on!" He started to smother them like dogs, then suddenly yelled, "GO ON! SHOO! You'll… Catch viruses from each other or something! You'll… You'll…"

Wall•E and Eve slowly moved more toward the screen ahead, Eve looked deep into each doorway, trying to analyze and see if any remaining plant residue could give her a clue about which one they should go into…

Together.

There was no way that some measly little robot orb was going to get them apart. No way, no h—WAM!

A gray wall suddenly slammed down from the ceiling, cutting perfectly between the two, "Sorry, but you made me." Wheatley hissed.

"NO! WALL•E!" Eve called out as she slammed her arms on the wall, going to the sides and trying to reach up to the top for some kind of space that she could try and pull it open again, or to at least to see him.

"Evah!" She heard from the other side weakly. It made her worry if he had gotten hurt from it. Although, it was also hard to hear over the menacing laughter of Wheatley—as he watched them suffer.

"Hahaha, I love feeling this evil!" Wheatley went back to laughing. Infuriated, Eve made a fist and went full speed into the screen, making a huge hole in it and cracking most of it; but also sending a huge shock through her body.

"OW! What was that all about?! I didn't do nothin' to you!" Wheatley got mad, and that factor was enough to make Eve feel proud, and she knew that electric shock was totally worth it. She started listening for Wall•E again as Wheatley started to ramble on some more.

"I'm pretty sure I didn't… Well, now that you mention it, I've done nothin' to make you want to take your anger out on me. You know how much that hurts? I mean, really, that truly hurts. Think about it, let's say you're given this person all you got, 'n all you can give. Then they go ahead and punch you right in the eye? Do you feel bad about this? In any way? Do you?"

Eve rolled her eyes, "Wall•E?"

"Evah…" Eve sighed in relief when she could hear him over Wheatley's random talking.

Eve thought for a moment, what could she do? There was no way they could get into the same place again as long as Wheatley was in charge, let alone be freed from this terrible place. Eve held back a whimper as she realized that it was possible that they would never meet again, they may find each others' traces, but never truly each other.

Eve pressed against the wall and slid down it. Although she was full charged, she felt weakness dragging on her. Hopefully if she acted like she couldn't work through the tests would get Wheatley to put them together and see how much they improve when they are.

Wheatley was still talking, so Eve decided to try and tell Wall•E her plan, "Act… Slow." She whispered loud enough for him to hear.

"Slow?"

"Stupid."

"St-st… Oooh…" When Eve was sure he understood, she pressed her hand against the wall to get up again, then suddenly she realized that she felt some kind of warmth coming from the other side of the wall where her hand was. Some kind of special sense… Something made her imagine that he was pressing his hand against the wall at that same spot, and she watched it, wishing she could see through it.

"Eeevah…" Wall•E said calmly from the other side. In those two syllables were a thousand words.

Farwell, until we meet again…

"Wall•E…" She tried to say it with the same message. But no one had a way with words inside of one word as well as her one and only Wall•E.

And she wouldn't have it any other way.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

Wall•E threw his next tread forward, then pulled it slowly toward him. Then he put his other tread forward and continued to walk slowly like a human. He could see Wheatley watching him from his giant screen as he moved awkwardly up the stairs and into the next chamber.

This time, instead of being accompanied by his lovely Eve, he was alone… He was lost, not wanted to go through yet another test without her. But hopefully, this plan that she had come up with would work, and they would be able to see each other once more.

As he finally made his way up the stairs, the doors opened to an old chamber, one that had been around for ages. Wall•E looked around it for a while, there were clearly some extremely old parts to it, but there were also some renovated parts that made it have more of a fixed up feel to it.

"Hurry up, will you?" Wall•E continued to move slowly down a short hallway that then suddenly went right into a bigger room.

"Well, uh, welcome to your final test." Wheatley finally seemed to give up on trying to get him to move faster and be smarter, "Made this chamber all by myself, yes I did." Another screen with Wheatley's face on it came out of the wall as he gloated, "Kind of got an idea from a really old test chamber, but anyhow, that doesn't matter." Wall•E was sort of curious at this, but he didn't want to show it.

"But see that? I got some real shiny platforms that will bring you round some obstacles. Then there are some lasers and the, uh… Ahem, lava substance, always friendly… Or… Fun, I mean. Then a bit ahead you get some spiky-death-plates. Even better, you know?" Wheatley nodded in agreement with himself.

"And, since you've been such a good little chap, I will reward you at the end of this test. How does that sound? You like surprises, don't you? Well then, I'd say you'd better hurry on through to the end of this chamber." Wheatley nodded again and then just continued to watch Wall•E carefully. Something about this situation wasn't very solid.

The surprise was nothing for Wall•E to look forward to, that was for sure. Trusting Wheatley as much as he did, he knew that surprise was not going to be good. With that, he looked around the room, there was a cube in front of a laser facing right toward a receiver. All he had to do was remove it, and a line of blue lights showed him that that would start the platforms moving.

Instead of just doing it immediately, he just sat there staring at it for a while, pretending like he didn't know how it worked. Then after a minute or so of looking at that tiny part of the room, he went up to the cube and picked it up, engaging the platforms behind him. He just placed it back down, just to make Wheatley mad. It surprised Wall•E that he had not gotten mad enough to just tell him how to do the test.

Finally getting bored of playing with the cube, Wall•E placed the cube on a now-moving platform and jumped on beside it. He was careful to make sure he and the cube didn't fall off the platforms, because then they'd fall into the lava substance that Wheatley had mentioned.

The platform moved achingly slow, turning a corner, going straight, turning a corner, going straight again. Wall•E started to get bored, waiting for the obstacles to finally come it. Instead, he was just stranded on the platform with a cube above some acid, going along a light beam that decided the direction down a long and winding corridor.

They took another turn, and Wall•E saw Wheatley on a giant screen again, "Wondering where all those wondrous obstacles went to? Well, I didn't want you to strain yourself before your big surprise, so I went ahead and emptied them out for you. Now all you have to worry about, is the surprise." Some hissing sound coming from the next turn made Wall•E's brows go up in terror, he recognized that sound.

"Anyway, glad you could DROP BY!" Suddenly the light beam disappeared and the platform fell, with Wall•E screaming on top of it.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

"Oh, done already?" Wheatley said over the intercom as Eve walked through the exit door. These tests were so easy that she couldn't even pretend to be stupid to feel stupid while solving them. She was irritated at how easy they were, at least when GLaDOS was in charge, the tests were fun to solve and gave her a tingle of satisfaction when she finished something difficult.

Instead, these tests only had one aspect to solve it. Whether it was a button in plain sight that brought a box down and you had to put it on a button to open the door, or just moving a laser, it just was making Eve's mind explode with simplicity.

"I mean… Are you sure you're done with that one? I see there's a… Oh, yeah, you finished it." Eve clenched her fist at his irritating voice that just talked on and on about nothing and yet anything. He was basically just shoving in her face the fact that he could talk in full sentences easily; although he was taking an interest in the way that she could fly and hover. Several times, he had asked her how her hovering systems worked, and she—thankfully—couldn't tell him.

"Right, so… On to the… Ahem, final test. Should feel proud of yourself, there, I mean, that _was_ a lot of tests. Rather complicated tests, that is. Don't you feel the tiniest bit of pride? No? Just me?" Eve growled lightly, not wanting to hear him anymore. Something about him just grinded on her circuits, maybe his accent, maybe the fact that he had taken Wall•E from her and laughed at it.

Maybe it was all of him; but at the moment, that didn't matter. What mattered was the upcoming test, and what would happen to her when she was finished on that one. She moved really slowly to the elevator. It was the least she could do just to piss him off one more time.

"Are you sure you don't want to… You know, hurry a bit more? I mean, it's your _last test_. You know, final, end, finale… And, uh… You get to meet that little brown bot in the end, right? Oh yeah, sure, and I'll… Let you go." His awkward pauses made Eve pretty sure that he was lying about it, so she wouldn't bother hurrying herself to get to the fake surprise.

When she finally made it into the elevator, it shut immediately, almost brushing against Eve's shell. As it moved, it wasn't sluggish drag, instead, it flew downwards so fast, that Eve clung onto the walls, feeling like she was falling at high speeds. It was taking her pretty low, only showing her that his lie was more invalid. They no longer went passed openings to test chambers, but now just dark random area.

Suddenly, the elevator jerked out of place, jamming awkwardly from the speed. Eve was thrown down into the ground of the elevator, her head then crashed forward into the doors. The glass didn't break, but one of the doors jerked itself open and she tumbled out. Far below was the hard ground, Eve grabbed onto the elevator so she wouldn't fall. Then she frequently looked around, trying to find a way she could escape from him.

"NONONONO! THAT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!" Wheatley's voice came from inside the elevator. He probably didn't estimate that the speed would make enough friction to heat the rails and make the mechanisms inside break. Another aspect to show how smart Wheatley really was.

"Okay, I can fix that… Just… Just stay there, I'll get some claws to yank the elevator back into place. Just, don't. Go. Anywhere." Wheatley really did want her to stay, there was something important about her that it seemed like everyone at Aperture Science _really_ wanted…

Unfortunately, Eve won't let them have her. She dropped off of the elevator, fighting to push herself up enough to not hit the ground. When she arrived down there safely, she immediately tried to look around the darkness of the huge open room. She had never seen anything like it before, the place was so dark, but she could tell that she had landed on some kind of giant hatch.

A scuttling sound a little ways off startled her, and she looked into the darkness to see a blue light and an orange light. She recognized them immediately as Atlas and P-body. They moved over to her with the same friendly stance. She moved over to them as well, about to give them a friendly handshake, then a peeling label on the hatch caught her attention for some reason.

She was forced to stop, backing up to look at it the right way. She read it:

Conversion Gel

Caution: Contains large amounts of lunar stone

Poison

Atlas and P-body came over to her slower, probably wondering why she had stopped to look at that. They followed her gaze, but Eve doubted that they could read if they couldn't even speak one word. She looked up at them, at least they seemed like they had stayed out of Wheatley's gra—

"Oh my, look what the little white puss dragged in!" Eve didn't have enough time to turn before a claw arm grasped her torso, and two other claws reached forward and grabbed Atlas and P-body as they frantically tried to run from them.

When Eve was pulled into the air, she saw several other claws as well, one seemed to have a camera on it. Eve growled in frustration.

"I think we're going to have to have a small pit stop by another test chamber…"


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

"AHAHAHA!" Wheatley's cold, evil laugh boomed throughout the small corridor that the platform was now moving down into. The temperature began to rise, and Wall•E was freaking out, seeing that ahead of the path was a giant room of nothing but fire. The cracking of the flames were louder and louder, and Wall•E could do nothing but cling to his portal gun and stand on the cube that he had taken to try and stay as far away from the heat as he could.

"So, I was left alone with some old files of the old testing track, and I noticed that all the test subjects would disappear here. I thought, 'Well, that's odd, then why was there one subject that got out?' and then it hit me. The ol' hag had left an area to portal out of the place, its mad! So, good ol' uncle Wheatley found a way to fix all that." The platform went down lower and lower into the pit, and Wheatley was right, there was no place to portal out of there.

"Step one, take away all portal surfaces. Step two, engage crushers near the fire." Suddenly, a crusher almost brushed past the back of Wall•E's head, the sound of the gears almost covered up the rest of what Wheatley had to say, "And step three, take away your portal gun." With that, a two-pronged claw came down from above and grabbed the portal gun from him.

Then Wheatley continued to laugh, "Best thing about this is that now you won't be there to stop me from ripping that white probe to shreds to use her parts for her hover abilities! AHAHA!" Wall•E's eyes widened, he was going to destroy his precious Eve!

Not while he was still kicking!

Wall•E looked around frantically. This was his last chance to get out of there, he needed to work something out, and fast. Then he noticed the gaps that the crushers left when they were out of the wall. He looked up as he watched the claw pull away rapidly with the portal gun.

He had one try at this…

Wall•E quickly went off of the cube and threw it at the claw as hard as he could; successfully knocking the portal gun free. Wall•E timed it, watching it fall through the air and toward the depths of the flames.

He leaped, arms extended, barely grasping the gun before landing on the side of a crusher as he flung itself back into its place in the wall. He watched the opening, and just before the crusher was almost to the gap; he rolled, leaped, and landed. The arm of the crusher folding next to him, it barely gave him enough space.

But at least he was alive. For now.

The crusher moved out again, and Wall•E catapulted over the arm to get to the other side where there was some kind of opening. Hopefully Wheatley didn't know that he had escaped. Wall•E looked down the small passage way that led behind the crushers. It was extremely dark, but there was at least some kind of light coming from an opening in the panels on the other side.

He traveled down the passageway quickly but carefully. There was no need for him to be captured aga—

The panels to the one side of him opened to reveal a giant screen with Wheatley on it, it was hanging off of a railing from above it, "Do you know how helpful that flying ability would be? I could clear out half of this place from railings like the one this screen's on right now."

Wall•E screamed, only trying to avoid visions of Wheatley tearing his precious Eve to pieces. He looked everywhere until he saw, clear off in the distance, a wall he could put portals on. He shot it immediately, just in case he needed it. Then he looked down to see that there was a fast moving platform very very far below him. He hoped that he would make it, but it was his only way out of there.

And so he took a leap of faith…


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

Eve's scream became louder, the terrible shocks that went through her body made her quiver uncontrollable. She was being held down on a table, strapped down and unable to move. Scanning lasers and vicious needle-like instruments poked at her body like wild beasts trying to get a meal.

Wheatley's hanging body swiveled once more over to another screen and he said something to it. It was probably the video to watch another test subject. Eve screamed even louder as a small claw started to dig around her main circuit board, sending harsh zaps of electricity to manipulate it.

Wheatley returned, inspecting the work of the little robot probes. Eve hissed miserably at him, trying to get him to stop, the pain was so powerful she couldn't bare it.

"Oh will you shut up already? You're not the only one in the room, you know." Wheatley complained, and Eve growled at him and his head came closer to look into the opening to her main circuit board. She had no idea what he was trying to do with her, although she had decided that it wasn't for the better.

Another terrible shock went through Eve's body and she scrambled and yanked herself around to try and release herself from the straps and she screamed again, "Almost finished, you little…" He couldn't come up with an insult, "… Soon, I will have your gravity manipulating systems. I'm not sure how they're going to fit up on me, but," He went over to the other screens again, then came back quickly, "It's a nice thing to work on as—"

Some kind of alarm went off and an announcer said something that Eve could not understand because Wheatley suddenly yelled, "SHUT UP!" Then he went over to the other screens and watched them carefully for a moment.

"Honestly, do you know how stressful all of this is? I've got to work on my… Flying systems… Then I have that brain damaged human with a potato on her portal gun. Then I have that stupid brown box, _then_ I have that announcer voice that that won't leave me alone. And I have—Hold on an moment…" Eve struggled to get herself free again, but failed once more. The tools around her were making loud noises as they waited their turn to take a bite from Eve's main core.

She continued to struggle as Wheatley started talking about something, then suddenly a sentence caught her attention, "Hello, this is the part where I kill you." Wheatley said confidently, then he started explaining things, but Eve paid no attention, she felt one of the straps on her arm loosen. She slowly pulled her arm out from underneath it. With one arm free, she used it to pull off the straps holding her torso down, then her head. Then she released her other arm.

She grabbed one of the needles near her main core and broke it, getting it out of the way. She kept an eye on Wheatley, hoping he wouldn't turn around any time soon. With that, she started to sneak away, Wheatley seemed pretty intense on the task at hand, which was good for her, at least.

She continued to go over to the exit and she ran through it; passing Atlas and P-body, who were in a cage. They watched her carefully as she went passed, and Eve felt sorry for them, after all, she had been the one to get them caught. She stopped out of pity and guilt, but there was no opening to get them out. Eve looked at them, silently apologizing.

Suddenly something closed around her, and it startled her. Then she noticed it was another cage, and it started to drag her back into the room with Wheatley.

"Trying to escape, I see. Well, that won't work anymore, I'm going to just put you right… There." The cage dragged over to the corner of the room, then some panels opened up and the cage hid inside of the wall. Eve whined, she was going to be stuck there forever.

Or at least until her parts were needed…


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

Wall•E collided with the glass platform hard, but thankfully it didn't break. He got up as fast as he could and looked ahead to make sure that the platform wasn't going to just go into another trap, but it seemed like it was only going through the middle of the Enrichment Center. He had landed on one of a long line of platforms.

He looked up at where he had jumped from, he was surprised he had survived. The giant screen was still hanging there, but then it started to move back to some other place, the same direction that Wall•E was going. Probably going to… Wall•E thought for a moment. He knew he'd have to get to Wheatley's lair, but was it such a good idea to jump all the way down onto this platform? What if that screen was going to be sent back to his lair?

He continued to watch the screen, then suddenly realized it was going toward a place where he could put a portal, so he put one there immediately. He had to wait a moment before he came upon that same place. He went over to it and placed the opposite portal on the wall as well. He reached over and grabbed the wall and went through the portals.

The giant screen had already passed, but Wall•E could still see it a distance from where he was. He wasn't sure how good this was going to be, but at least he was going to try it, he put the portal gun into his compaction chamber, keeping it sort of open but leaning back to make sure it didn't fall out. Then he leaped and grabbed the railing that the screen was on.

He moved himself so that one hand was holding on to each side of the railing, and he started to climb along the railing as fast as he could, keeping an eye on his hands so that he didn't grab the wrong place and fall to his death. He was moving faster than he thought he could, which was very good, but he could see that the railing was going to go straight up soon. He was not looking forward to that.

"Wherever you are, brown bot, I would like to point out that what you're trying to do is a terrible idea. Rescuing that little white probe isn't going to help anyone. Especially you. The only thing that lies ahead is your death." Wheatley's voice boomed throughout the entire open area, Wall•E hoped he didn't know where he was. But no matter what that little blue sphere said, it wasn't going to stop Wall•E from rescuing Eve.

The sound of wheels carrying something light caught his attention just before he went up the vertical rail; he turned his head to see something coming at him fast, hanging from the rail as well. Wall•E readied himself, then when it was just beside him, he jumped onto it, using it to ride on the rail faster.

"I recommend you stop… With the whole 'rescuing' thing… Did you stop yet? Because I'm not quite sure you've stopped." An alarm went off and he quickly said, "Well, that's my cue to go. I'll work on the assumption that you're still trying to rescue her and… You know, destroy everything that gives me the sign that you are still alive. Bye!"

Wall•E clung onto the hanging thing, still keeping his chamber a little open to keep the portal gun safe. He was also looking around for any places to put portals and looking for overall places to go. Who knew if Wheatley would suddenly break the railing because he assumed he was alive and on there. Wall•E almost expected explosions to go off around him, but they didn't.

He continued to look around and he saw a little cove with a door far away. He zoomed in to see that the door said, "WHEATLEY Emergency Shutdown and Cake Dispensary" The cake dispensary part was odd, and it was obviously a trap, but at least it seemed promising. Besides, the walls could hold portals. Wall•E leaned back and opened his compartment and took out the portal gun with one hand. After shooting a portal over there, he waited until he came to another enclosed area where he could put a portal.

After putting the other one there, he leaped into it. Finally, he was on solid ground. He turned to the door and pulled the knob. The door suddenly started to timber, and Wall•E freaked out.

"Ahahaha!" Wheatley's evil laugh came over the intercom, and the panels behind the fake door moved to reveal a screen with Wheatley on it. "I knew you would fall for that! Well, I was only pretty sure, but at least it worked! The same trick that GLaDOS pulled on that brain damaged lady!" The open wall closed with more panels, and the portal disappeared as the panels behind it moved as well. "Now who's the moron? Huh? Who is it? NOT me! Oh yeah! Who's the boss?" Wheatley started to celebrate as Wall•E raced around the small room trying to find a way out. Then he suddenly stopped his chanting, "Oh, and I'll take this…" A claw reached down and grabbed the portal gun from Wall•E's hands before he could react, "Thank you very much. And now, lights! Camera! Action!"

The floor fell out from under Wall•E and he landed in a small room, then one side opened to reveal a huge hanging robot, the blue sphere on the end indicated that it was Wheatley. Out of curiosity and determination to find Eve, Wall•E moved into the lair with a strong posture.

When he looked around the lair, he couldn't help but wonder if he was expecting someone to come and try attacking him. Something about the set up. Maybe he was waiting just for him.

Wall•E charged, aiming to attack the blue-eyed villain hands-on. As he leaped up, Wheatley spun a three-sixty and smashed Wall•E to the wall.

Or cage…

Definitely a cage… The opening shut with a sudden slam

Maybe it was going to be harder than Wall•E thought…


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

Eve was leaned back against the side of the cage when inside the wall when suddenly the darkness was destroyed by light, and something else was slammed into the back of the cage. Eve freaked out, thinking that it was something dangerous that could attack her or maybe it was something designed to start taking her apart. She raced for the exit, but the door closed and the panels fell back into place before she could get through.

She scratched at the bars, whining for Wheatley to let her out of there. Then she heard a familiar whirling sound from the opposite side of the cage and she looked back to see Wall•E up-side-down and sprawled all over the place, he whistled when he saw her, and Eve just stared at him in disbelief.

"WALL•E!" She raced over to his side to hold him, but then saw the Emancipation Coat still on him and looked down to see that it was still on her as well. She sighed, unable to help him turn himself upright.

"Oh no! I put you both in the same cage, didn't I?" Eve could hear Wheatley from the other side of the panels. "Oh blimey… Could you just… Kinda destroy each other in there? You know? While you're in there, could you? It would help me out a lot and…" He drifted off as the sound of some more alarms went off, then followed by some mechanical sounds.

"Well, well, well. Welcome to my lair! Lemme just flag something up: According to that control panel light up there, the entire building is going to self destruct in about six minutes." Wheatley was clearly talking to someone that was in his lair. Eve exchanged an uneasy glance with Wall•E at the news that Wheatley was telling that person.

"Pretty sure it's a problem with the light, I think the light is on the blink. But just in case it isn't, I'm actually going to have to kill you. As discussed earlier." Was Wheatley talking to GLaDOS? Eve pressed herself against the cage opening to listen to what they were saying. "So let's call that three minutes, and then a minute break, which should leave a leisurely two minutes to figure out how to shut down whatever's causing all these fires. So anyway, that's the itinerary."

Eve started to try pulling the cage opening up, to escape and help take him down, along with whoever was in there right now. Maybe Wall•E and her wasn't enough, but that leaves the person in there at half the probability to succeed in this battle. Although, if they were all to work together, it could at least up the probability.

Wheatley continued to talk as Wall•E came up beside Eve to help pull up the door. It was budging, at least a little bit. Maybe if they had something to wedge down there then they could pry it open. Eve quickly used her hands to ask Wall•E if he had at some point put something like that in his compartment. He shook his head and Eve grunted in frustration.

There was suddenly an explosion right next to the panels that were hiding then in the cage. Eve looked over to the now-open area to the right of the cage. She hadn't noticed it before, but there was a tube going passed them that had been running white liquid. As part of it exploded, Wheatley started yelling in frustration.

Although the sound that really caught Eve's attention was when she heard the sound of a portal becoming active. She recognized the gel immediately: Conversion Gel! Whoever was in there had a portal gun, and knew how to use it-and hopefully use it well.

Eve's senses went into hyper drive, the situation pushing her to help the test subject battling Wheatley on the other side of the panels. Eve motioned for Wall•E to get out of the way, and she charged at the side of the cage. It moved, but just barely.

"Evah!" Wall•E was bouncing up and down in anxiety, he pointed to Eve's right arm, then at the tube, then at the floor. She followed his gaze at each one, knowing he meant the portal gun, the gel, and the cage floor. She realized some of the gel had leaked onto their side of the panels, and the bottom of the cage actually was a portal surface.

Eve laughed in the excitement of the moment, taking out her portal gun and shooting a large puddle of Conversion Gel with one portal, and the floor beneath her with the other.

Wall•E motioned Eve to go first, so she did, putting her portal gun away for the moment while she climbed on top of the tube, then looked through a crack in the panels caused from the explosion.

The entire place was a mess, white was everywhere on the floor and some spaces on the wall, things were falling apart, blue gel was also covering some parts of the floor. Bombs billowed out from above Wheatley, following a woman in orange pants and white tank-top. Her short black hair was pulled back in a small pony tail, and her gray eyes darted from place to place.

She looked like she knew what she was doing. But either way, Eve wasn't about to believe that she could do it completely alone and leave to let her do the entire thing on her own.

Some of the roof above them fell apart, revealing a night sky with a full moon. Eve gasped, flinging her arms around to try and tell Wall•E what her plan was, but the quick excitement of the plan made her react too fast, so Wall•E probably didn't understand a thing. She just ended up motioning him to follow her up the dome of Wheatley's lair.

She had remembered that the conversion gel was made from moon rocks. All in all, the moon was a portal surface. If Eve were to make a hole on the top, warn the test subject to stay clear of Wheatley, and shoot a portal under him and on the moon, then their biggest problem would be solved.

Wall•E jumped onto the tube as well, and Eve started to climb, hating that she couldn't just fly up there and do it for the test subject and finish Wheatley off once and for all. The events that were happening inside the dome made it loud, adding to the pounding wind that they were beginning to encounter as they got out of the facility through the hole that had been made.

When they were finally at the top, Eve saw a little area that looked weak enough to just punch through it. They moved over there fast, and she started to bang on the piece as hard as she could, and Wall•E joined her quickly.

An extremely powerful blast from inside the dome hit Eve just as she was lifting her hand to give it one more powerful strike, it knocked her away from the little place, and she started to tumble down the side of the dome. She only barely heard Wall•E as he screamed her name.

Time seemed to move in slow motion when suddenly her tumbling reversed, and instead she started to be pulled in toward the hole. Wall•E was nowhere to be seen. Eve was yanked into the dome once more, gravity pulling at her hard, but she reached out and grabbed the first thing she felt.

It took her a while to realize what was going on, that she was clinging to Wheatley's body as his head was being dragged into space, the test subject clinging onto his head, holding her breath with wide eyes.

Wheatley was screaming at her, and Eve could barely make it out, "Let go! Let go! I'm still connected, I can pull myself in! I can still fix this!"

Then GLaDOS's familiar voice cut in, even over the loud sucking sound that came from the portal below, "I already fixed it, and you are not coming back!"

A claw grabbed the arm of the woman and pulled her in after swatting Wheatley away and into space.

Suddenly the portal closed, and everything fell ominously still. Eve lost control of herself, and fell down onto the ground with a loud thump.


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

Wall•E lifted himself off of the ground, examining the situation. Something below the handing body of GLaDOS was covering the bottom, probably fixing GLaDOS once again. Wall•E continued to look around the mess and saw the limp, white body of Eve beside the repairing area.

"Evah!" He leaped over the debris and came up close beside her, not wanting to touch her in case she was injured and the shock from the Emancipation things that were still on them could worsen it. She was face down, and her arms were sprawled out around her, Wall•E found two small pieces of debris that he used to flip her face up, extremely carefully.

"Evah?" Her screen flashed on once more as she gained consciousness again.

Wall•E bounced slightly in relief as she rose back up, "Wall•E." She said with pure relief and joy in her voice. Hearing her say his name like that again made him swoon, wishing he could just run away with her.

He watched her for a while, then looked around some more, the entire place was a mess, and there was an elevator where that test subject that had been fighting Wheatley lay on her side. She looked peaceful, and Wall•E could see that she was still breathing just fine.

The mess around the place egged on his nerves, and he decided that they should clean it up out of courtesy to GLaDOS, who seemingly had a rough day. He started to grab things, scooping up all things that looked like they could never be used to fix something and looked like total garbage, and crushed them down into the cubes that he was made to create.

Soon enough, Eve decided to help, sorting through some things that looked useful, and placing them all against a wall and out of the way. Wall•E placed the cubes he made against another wall, stacked up to stay out of the way. As he turned around once again to gather more, he realized GLaDOS's normal head was back on, and she was staring him down.

Although she didn't say a word, instead, she started moving panels around and clearing out the place as well. A small room opened up at the side, and a round, tilted canister opened. Wall•E made his way over to there, looking in to see flames far below. It was an incinerator, he could use that to get rid of the trash pieces. So he took down the stack he had made and placed them into the incinerator.

All three of them worked in silence, until suddenly Wall•E saw in the corner of his optics a tall orange figure and a short blue figure. It was Atlas and P-body, they too began to help clean up. Although, the place was such a mess, that it took hours to get it completely cleaned out, so it looked just like new.

Wall•E stood next to Eve without a word, wondering what was to come. Was GLaDOS going to keep them to be test subjects? Or was she going to destroy them with her cruel, twisted mind? They watched her carefully, Atlas and P-body were keeping an eye on the woman asleep in the glass elevator.

"I've had a long day. Here to conclude the long story, stands you two. The glitched couple that I still cannot understand." GLaDOS turned her hard yellow eye on them and then continued, "I thought I could use that glitch for my own good, but I cannot bring myself to tear it from you. I still can't understand the way you act around each other. Although… I'm beginning to. A lot of changes have happened to me within the last few days. Finding you has been an interesting discovery. I can grant you one thing, in exchange for the help you've given me to return once more to my normal state."

Whirling sounds came from behind them, and Wall•E turned to see some panels had moved away to reveal another glass elevator, "On your way out, you will find some things you may desire. They are yours now, you deserve them." Both Wall•E and Eve felt bewildered from the kindness that GLaDOS was giving them, it wasn't like her to do such a thing. Wall•E could tell that Eve wasn't having the easiest time with believing her, but something told him that GLaDOS wasn't in the state to lie at the moment.

Wall•E turned, and went into the elevator, Eve took a while to trust her before she too went in with Wall•E. The door closed and two layers of panels fell back in front of it.

"Goodbye." GLaDOS said, almost cut off by something else. Before the elevator started to move, they heard GLaDOS say something to someone, "Oh thank God, you're alright."

Wall•E guessed that the woman had woken up. Then the elevator started to move upward. Wall•E looked over at Eve, she seemed deep in thought as they went through a long, dark tube to the surface. Suddenly the elevator stopped, and the door opened to reveal some things on the ground right in front of the doors. He recognized it immediately as Eve's plasma cannon and some tiny block-like things that hovered lightly in place.

Eve reached out quickly and grabbed them all. The door closed again and they went up some more as she tore off the arm equipped with the portal gun, then placed her normal arm back on and released her plasma cannon to make sure it worked. Then she put the little blocks in her chamber, still looking like she was doubting the situation.

"Eve…" Wall•E said calmly to her, she turned to him slowly, and they just watched each other for a moment. The sound of something going through an Emancipation Grill made Wall•E look up. A horizontal one was waiting for them as the elevator went up. He stuck his hand up, making sure it wasn't going to destroy them when they went through it.

Pain sheered through his hand, and then his arm. But as he watched, he realized that the Emancipation Seal that went over his hand and arm was disappearing. He made an excited whistling sound as the torturing blue cover on him melted away.

Although, when the Emancipation Grill reached the floor of the elevator, the portal gun that Eve had was fizzled into mid air. But that didn't really matter now, Wall•E and Eve turned to each other, then leaped at each other, holding each other tight for the first time in what felt like years. Then he slid his hand down her arm and grasped her hand in his.

Then the elevator stopped, and a door opened to the outside world.

And there they moved into the open air and bright sunlight.

Hand in hand, just like it should be.


End file.
